Enrollment in Florida’s public schools is falling, but experts are divided over how much of the blame lies with the universal school choice program.
Several districts across the state are closing schools as attendance drops, while thousands of students flock to private schools or homeschooling options.
Some experts believe the change is the natural result of giving parents more choices in schooling, while others say Florida’s “lack of transparency” in private school data is hiding a larger story.
“I don’t think it would be a surprise, or should be a surprise, that as school choice grows significantly, it means that people often drop out of public schools, and as that happens, public schools and school districts public institutions may have to change the way they operate,” said Neal McCluskey, director of the CATO Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. “This may mean that some schools should close.”
“This is not a problem of choice because in this case, the choice – people are selecting something that they think works best for themselves. And ultimately, that’s what we should want for the education system: for people to receive what they consider to be the best education for their children and their families,” McCluskey added.
Declines in Florida’s public schools have hit some of the state’s largest areas, such as Duval, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. Broward County Public Schools leaders are considering closing 42 schools.
Florida expanded its eligibility for school choice vouchers to all students, regardless of income, last year, but it has long had more school choice options than other states.
State data shows that since 2019, 68,000 students have switched to charter schools. Private school enrollment increased by nearly 50,000 between the 2019-2020 school year and the 2022-2023 school year. And over the past five years, homeschooling has increased by 58.6%.
Only five other states have universal school choice programs, and so far, none have seen public school closures on the same scale as Florida. It is not yet clear whether they will catch up soon.
Damaris Allen, executive director of Families for Strong Public Schools in Florida, says the state has long underfunded public schools, leading families to want to choose other options.
“I think there are several factors, and one of them is definitely the size of the class. I know for a fact, I have heard from several parents that one of the reasons they are choosing to pull their children out of traditional public schools and try to place them in a private school is because the class sizes are smaller, and class sizes are exacerbated due to to lack of funding,” Allen said.
And these high class sizes in public schools are linked to Florida’s teacher shortage, with a report from Brown University’s Annenberg Institute in 2022 showing 5,294 teacher vacancies in the state, the highest in the country.
She also pointed to other controversial education initiatives in the state, which has made headlines for book bans, lessons on race and the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
State officials, Allen said, “have consistently favored private and charter school options and have failed to fulfill their constitutionally required duty to ensure that we have a high-quality public education system.”
Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, said that while “there is no doubt that voucher schemes are growing,” Florida’s “lack of transparency” in data on school choice options makes it difficult to determine the true cause of public schools. enrollments decline. He says many of the students in the choice programs have never been to public institutions.
“We know this both from the number of children who use it and the dollars spent, but we know almost nothing about these children. Other than that, we know that the vast majority already attended private schools,” said Cowen.
“We’re seeing all the declines in many different public school districts across the country, including districts that don’t have any vouchers. Part of it is that there are children leaving for different states […] Florida is a little more complicated because there are population increases in some places, but we don’t know – and what’s not true is that the growth of the voucher program is the only explanation,” he added.
The school choice movement has grown exponentially since the COVID-19 pandemic, with most programs only recently implemented. Time will tell if they follow in Florida’s footsteps.
“Florida and Arizona have had choice for decades and they just have so much more choice, I think, because they’ve had such a rich ecosystem of choices and been able to offer families choices for so long. So they were able to build on that,” said Marty Lueken, director of EdChoice’s tax education and research center.
“It is difficult to say with certainty what the cause of the decline in public school enrollment is,” he added.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
