Author

Patrick R. Gibbons

Patrick Gibbons is public affairs manager at Step Up for Students and a research fellow for the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. A former teacher, he lived in Las Vegas, Nev., for five years, where he worked as an education writer and researcher. He can be reached at (813) 498.1991 or emailed at pgibbons@stepupforstudents.org. Follow Patrick on Twitter: at @PatrickRGibbons and @redefinEDonline.

Study details change in Gardiner families’ spending patterns

Patrick R. Gibbons June 21, 2021

Patrick R. Gibbons

The longer students remain on Florida’s Gardiner Scholarship program, the more likely their parents are to spend money on curriculum, tutoring and specialized services, a new working paper finds.

The study, “Distribution of Education Savings Accounts Usage Among Families,” by Michelle Lofton of the University of Georgia and Martin Lueken of EdChoice, examines the spending patterns of families on the scholarship program over multiple years. It is the largest of its kind to date.

The Gardiner Scholarship, created in 2014 and named after State Sen. Andy Gardiner’s family, provides parents of students with special needs with a scholarship worth an average of around $10,000. It is set up as an education savings account (ESA) where parents can use the funds on more than just school tuition and fees. They also can purchase textbooks, school supplies, curriculum, tutoring, therapies and more.

The scholarship is currently limited to students with specific needs such as autism, Down syndrome and spina bifida. Last year, 17,508 students received a Gardiner Scholarship, with more than 9,000 enrolling in one of 1,870 private schools.

According to the researchers, family spending patterns change the longer they remain on the program. As families become more familiar with the program, they begin to spend more money on expenses other than tuition and fees, representing a desire to further customize their child’s education.

The study also finds rural families are more likely to spend the scholarship on curriculum and instruction than on private school tuition.

“These findings imply that families enrolled in ESAs are learning from prior usage and are able to customize education to areas beyond tuition over the course of their child’s educational life cycle,” the researchers wrote.

Since 2015, families have averaged 21 purchases, spending $8,373 a year. Usage increased from 60% of funds in 2015 to 88% by 2019.

Expenditures on tuition increased by 11%, or $550 over that time. But expenditures on instructional materials, specialized services, and college tuition savings plans increased considerably more — instructional materials by 400%, or $1,375, and specialized services by 200%, or $450.

The number of purchases increased over time as well. In 2015 families averaged just nine purchases, but by 2019 families were averaging 30 purchases a year.

Spending varied by race and income as well.

Parents of Black and Hispanic students spent more of their scholarship, on average, than white students. They were also 7 to 9% more likely to spend the scholarship on school tuition than white students.

Parents in the top-quartile income areas spent more money on fewer items but spent less on tuition and more on tutoring and specialized services than families in bottom-quartile income areas.

The Gardiner Scholarship will become part of the Family Empowerment Scholarship for the 2021-22 school year, though the ESA component of the program will remain exclusive to children with special needs. Florida’s McKay Scholarship, a voucher program for students with special needs, will also merge with the Family Empowerment Scholarship in 2022.

Parents or guardians may apply for the scholarship here.

June 21, 2021 0 comment

Analysis Course Choice Courts Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Faith-based Education Featured Parental Choice Private Schools Religious Education School Choice

U.S. Supreme Court to conference on Maine school choice case

Patrick R. Gibbons June 11, 2021

Patrick R. Gibbons

Two states, Maine and Vermont, have devised ways to circumvent the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Espinoza vs. Montana.

States can’t discriminate against religious schools because of their religious identity. But can states discriminate if the school teaches religious things?

If you thought this debate was settled by the U.S. Supreme Court last summer, think again.

Two recent circuit court rulings say yes, states can discriminate against religious instruction. Lawyers for the Institute for Justice briefed the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month and are waiting to hear if the nation’s highest court will resolve this issue once and for all.

The 2020 landmark Supreme Court case Espinoza v. Montana was supposed to settle the debate over “separation of church and state” in publicly funded education programs. That ruling determined that, “A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”

Despite this proclamation, Maine and Vermont have found clever ways to ignore the court ruling.

Maine has been offering publicly funded private education through a town tuition assistance program since 1873. The program is available to students living in towns without an available public school. Students may choose to attend a public school in another town or attend a private school. That private school, however, cannot be religious in nature.

But just a few months after the Espinoza ruling, the 1^st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the religious exclusion in Maine’s program.

The court got clever with the wording. The judges argued that the Espinoza case prohibited states from discriminating against the schools’ religious status, whereas Maine was not discriminating against religious status but prohibiting religious use.

In other words, Maine’s ban on selecting private religious schools was not over the school’s religious identity, but because the religious school taught religious things.

It may be a distinction without meaning.

Could religious schools in Maine receive publicly funded tuition if they did not provide the publicly funded student religious instruction? That is unclear, as Maine’s prohibition appears to be a blanket ban.

The 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a similar argument in a case over Vermont’s tuition program earlier this month.

The Institute for Justice, which represented parents, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the Maine case.

“Maine is discriminating against students that pick religious schools and the High Court should grant review and put an end to such exclusions nationwide,” Institute for Justice managing attorney Arif Panju said in a press release. “By singling out religion—and only religion—for exclusion from its tuition assistance program, Maine violates the U.S. Constitution.”

The U.S. Supreme Court justices will consider on June 24 whether to grant review.

You can read the Institute’s Supreme Court brief here and supplemental brief here.

*Updated to clarify the results of the Vermont case decided on June 2nd.

June 11, 2021 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Legislation Featured Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Know Your History Parental Choice Private School Scholarships School Choice Tax Credit Scholarships

The 20-year-old scholarship success that might not have been

Patrick R. Gibbons June 11, 2021

Patrick R. Gibbons

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, center, applauds on the floor of the Florida House of Representatives after the passage of the Family Empowerment Scholarship program in 2019.

Twenty years ago, on June 13, 2001, Gov. Jeb Bush signed HB 21, a taxation relief bill that carried within it Florida’s third private school scholarship program. The program, then called the Florida Corporate Income Tax Credit Scholarship, would enroll its first students in the spring of 2002 and would grow to award more than 1 million scholarships by 2021.

But the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship was not destined to become the nation’s largest private school scholarship of its kind. In fact, it almost didn’t happen.

The bill carrying the program, SB 1048, was nearly killed on the second day of the legislative session. Politics, budget pressures, competing voucher ideas, the need to overhaul Florida’s election system after the debacle of the 2000 presidential election, and an anti-scholarship lawsuit looming overhead, meant the new scholarship’s future was far from certain.

The scholarship program was introduced under companion bills HB 271, sponsored by then-freshman Rep. Joe Negron (R-Stuart), and SB 1048, sponsored by Sen. Ken Pruitt (R-Port St. Lucie). Both versions allowed corporations to earn a dollar-for-dollar tax credit when donating to low-income scholarships.

The House version limited corporate donations to 75% of the taxes due but otherwise did not cap the total available tax credits. The Senate’s bill capped the program at $50 million in available tax credits and limited corporate donors to $200,000 in total tax credits annually.

The House version offered scholarships worth up to $4,000 for private school students, $1,000 for home education students, and $500 to cover transportation costs for students wishing to attend out-of-district public schools. The Senate’s bill offered no scholarships for home education, while the private school scholarship was worth $3,500. The public-school transportation scholarship remained the same.

Florida was spending $7,512 per pupil in public schools at the time according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Both bills limited scholarships to the more than 1 million students who were eligible for the National School Lunch Program, a federally assisted meal program operating in public and nonprofit private schools and residential childcare institutions.

School choice advocates quickly organized the handful of existing scholarship parents to meet with legislators, a move that put Democrats in a tough spot publicly.

“I personally resent the parading of Black parents through the halls of this Legislature and holding them up as examples of people who will receive vouchers,” Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Miami) fired back. “I personally resent the stereotype.”[1]

But it was no stereotype.

Those “parading” about the halls of the Legislature were parents of the 51 students on the Opportunity Scholarship in 2001, a program that offered scholarships to students attending public schools the state had given a letter grade of F. At the time, only students attending two high-poverty elementary schools in the entire state qualified, and most of those students happened to be Black.

The House moved swiftly before passing the bill 71-46 on March 8.

The Senate’s bill did not fare as well.

It nearly met disaster in the Senate Education Committee on March 7. Two Republicans, Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla of Miami and Sen. Donald Sullivan of Seminole, joined Democrats to vote down the scholarship bill 8-5.

Diaz de La Portilla argued the bill was “poorly written,” and cited confusion as to whether corporate donors could earn tax credits by buying books rather than funding private scholarships.[2]

Sullivan, however, would provide a way forward by moving to reconsider the vote, which according to the Associated Press, was “a procedural move that kept the bill alive.”[3]

The Senate’s scholarship bill would re-emerge in the Senate Education Committee on March 13, where it passed on a party line vote. It reached the Senate Finance and Taxation Committee on March 28 and again scraped by on a party line vote.

Despite passing in the House weeks before, the senate’s companion bill would linger on life support in the Appropriations Subcommittee on Education. By April 11, the bill was dead.

During this time, the Legislature had been negotiating with Bush over his priorities, which included eliminating the intangibles tax and $300 million in tax cuts.

Senators were unsure of where the money might come from. The proposed voucher programs could cost around $50 million or more, while fixing the electoral system could cost another $40 million. Other spending priorities also competed for tax dollars.

“The last couple of years it has sort of been his way or the highway,” Sen. Jim King told the Associated Press about the legislature’s relationship with the governor.[4]

Something would have to give.

The Legislature had been working on two other voucher bills, the smaller of which garnered the most attention and criticism. HB 303 and its Senate companion, SB 504, would create $3,000 private school scholarships for students attending overcrowded public schools.

Bill sponsor Rep. Carlos Lacasa (R-Miami) argued the program was necessary to relieve crowding because the state’s spending of $8.5 billion on school construction had failed to remedy the situation.[5]

An estimated 40,000 to 235,000 students would be eligible — a fraction of those eligible under the tax credit scholarship bill.

“Here we see the main character, Hannibal Voucher, attempting to cannibalize our public school system,” Rep. Bob Henriquez (D-Tampa) said of the bill.[6]

Columnist Daniel Ruth called it the “Gutting Public School System Act.”[7]

Wilson, the representative from Miami, predicted public schools would still be struggling in five years, while Rep. Eleanor Sobel (D-Hollywood) argued it would be helping mostly children from well-off families.[8]

HB 303 passed the House 63-54 on March 21, 2001, but Senate President John McKay and Senate Education Committee Chair Pruitt had no intentions of moving the bill forward. The tax credit scholarship faced criticism too.

“The tax credit bill is a gimmick to get around potential constitutional pitfalls for existing voucher programs,” said Rep. Lois Frankel (D-West Palm Beach). “It’s very clever and very scary.”

“I don’t feel that taking money out of public schools is right,” said Sen. Ron Klein (D-Delray Beach), who sent his own children to private schools.

According to a Tampa Tribune survey at the time, legislative Democrats were more likely than Republicans (32% to 27%) to send their own children to private schools.[9]

By April 24, the specter of a voucher defeat in the Florida Supreme Court passed as the justices declined to hear the case and allowed the October 2000 First District Court of Appeal ruling to stand. That ruling declared the Opportunity Scholarship program did not violate the state’s “paramount duty” to fund public schools.

However, the tax credit scholarship still had no active bill in the Senate.

On May 4, during the waning hours in the last day of the 2001 session, Pruitt filed an amendment to HB 21, a bill that eliminated the intangibles tax, a priority of Bush. The amendment included a $50 million tax credit scholarship program with scholarships worth up to $3,500. The bill passed 25-14 at 8:30 p.m.

As the midnight deadline ticked closer, the bill was sent to the House, where it passed 72-44 at 9:45 p.m.

Bush would fulfill his promise to eliminate the intangibles tax and get $175 million in tax cuts — and Florida would get a new tax credit scholarship program. Two decades later, the program would raise more than $4 billion to fund more than one million scholarships for low-income and working-class students.

It is a success that has never been duplicated by any other state — and one that almost didn’t happen.

[1] Staff Writer. (March 9, 2001). School vouchers lawmaker says blacks are being stereotyped. Miami Herald.

[2] Twiddy, D. (March 7, 2001). Panel Rejects GOP Voucher Bill. Tallahassee Democrat.

[3] Staff Writer. (March 7, 2001). Bush’s priorities seem in jeopardy from start. Associated Press/Bradenton Herald.

[4] Kallestad, B. (March 6, 2001). Tax cut, vouchers and election reform agreement far away. Associated Press.

[5] Kleindienst, L. (February 21, 2001). Key house committee Oks voucher bill; foes said measure would let students avoid the state assessment test that public-school students take. Orlando Sentinel. See also, Hegarty, S. (March 18, 2001). Lawmakers debate 2 new voucher bills. St. Petersburg Times.

[6] Staff Writer. (February 10, 2001). House Democrats criticize school voucher plan. Florida Times-Union.

[7] Ruth, D. (February 9, 2001). A voucher is a voucher is a… Tampa Tribune.

[8] Hallifax, J. (March 22, 2001). Debate on the floor. Tallahassee Democrat.

[9] Feller, B. (April 10, 2001). Voucher views based on beliefs. Tampa Tribune.

June 11, 2021 10 comments

Education Reporting Featured News School Choice Testing and Accountability

NAEP science scores a mixed bag

Patrick R. Gibbons May 28, 2021

Patrick R. Gibbons

The science results on The Nation’s Report Card are out, and while the news isn’t all bad, it isn’t great either.

Scores for fourth- grade students have declined from the 2015 peak while scores for eighth- and 12^th-grade science students have remained flat over the last decade.

The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) is administered to a random sample of students across public, private and charter schools. NAEP tests are given in reading, math and science every few years. For the 2019 NAEP science exam, 88,200 students in grades 4, 8 and 12 took the test.

On the three science tests, there was no difference in results between 2019 and 2015 on physical science across all grades. However, fourth-grade students scored 4 points lower on life science and 2 points lower on earth and space sciences compared with 2015. There was no difference in results for life or earth science in the eighth- or 12^th-grade results.

There is some encouraging news.

Demographic changes show America is drifting toward a majority-minority student population. Overall, white students declined from 60% of the student population taking the science exam in 2009 to 52% in 2019. Hispanic students grew from 17% to 25%, though Black students declined from 15% to 13%.

Impressively, Hispanic students saw a positive trend line throughout the decade in all three tested grade levels. Asian and Pacific Islander students scored the highest at 51% and 49% proficient or better, respectively.

The number of students eligible for free and reduced-price meals, who typically score significantly lower than non-eligible students, has increased from 40% of tested students in 2009 to 47% in 2019. However, 48% of test takers were eligible in 2015 when the test results were highest.

Now for the bad news.

Just 35% of students scored proficient or better in the science tests. Of them, only 14% of Black students and 20% of Hispanic students scored proficient or better. White students saw the largest declines between 2015 and 2019, with 47% of students scoring proficient or better, down from 50% in 2015.

Despite no change in raw scores for students in eighth grade or 12^th grade, the percentage of those students scoring proficient or better remains low, especially among high school seniors. The number of students who scored proficient or better declined from 36% in fourth grade to 22% in 12^th grade.

So why are fewer than 1 in 4 seniors proficient in science?

A NAEP survey found that 50% of 12^th-grade students reported rarely engaging in scientific activities in the classroom, compared with 30% in fourth grade and 42% in eighth grade.

Additionally, only 41% of 12^th-graders have taken courses in biology, chemistry and physics since the eighth grade.

Both factors may be playing a large role in 12^th-graders’ struggles to be proficient in science.

Large achievement gaps between white and Black students and white and Hispanic students still remain. The gap between white and Black students grew from 31 points in fourth grade to 34 points by eighth-grade. The gap between white and Hispanic students grow from 23 points in fourth grade to 25 points in 12^th grade.

However, this gap is an improvement over the 2015 results because white students saw larger score declines than Hispanic students in the fourth and 12^th grade science tests.

According to the report, the declines were driven by drops in scores among middle-performing students and the lowest-performing students. Students at the 50^th percentile saw an average decline of 2 points. But the lowest-performing students saw the biggest declines. Students in the 25^th percentile (meaning they scored as good as or better than 25% of students taking the test) declined 4 points, while students in the 10^th percentile droped 5 points.

These low-performing fourth-grade students struggled across all three tests, with life science declining the most between 2015 and 2019. The lowest-perorming students also did worse compared to 2015 in eighth-grade physical science, eighth-grade life science, eighth-grade earth science, 12^th grade physical science and 12^th grade life science.

May 28, 2021 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Demographic Research Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Politics Education Research Featured Parental Choice School Choice

Let’s try getting back to basics as a remedy for public education’s woes

Patrick R. Gibbons May 24, 2021

Patrick R. Gibbons

What’s faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings at a single bound?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No, it’s public education!

Since the time of Horace Mann’s common school in the 19^th century, American educators, politicians and commentators have been asking public education to take on multiple heroic tasks.

Mann not only wanted to educate the population, he wanted to assimilate and integrate immigrants. Some political commentators still share a similar view, though the idea of using public education to make America a melting pot has largely fallen out of favor.

A popular opinion today places the foundation of American democracy, as well as its very survival, in the hands of public education. These latter claims are growing louder as school choice gathers steam and the country fractures further into polarization.

But the public education system as we know it today was not instrumental in establishing the United States. In fact, diversifying and later desegregating education came about during Reconstruction, and after Brown v. Board of Education, neither of which occurred democratically; one came about via the U.S. military and the other by the court system.

America’s polarization can’t be blamed on school choice either. About 10% of the student population in the U.S. attends private K-12 schools today, a little less than was recorded way back in 1889, when 11.2% attended private schools, and lower still than the 14% peak in 1959. (You can see a chart of public and private school enrollment from 1869-70 to 2009 here.)

Compare this to less polarized countries like the United Kingdom, where 7% of students attend private schools; Germany, where 9% attend private schools; or even France, where 14% attend private schools. Each of those countries allows students to attend private schools at public expense.

Public education’s ability to heal political fracturing, if it is even possible, won’t come about because we mandate that schools teach the “right things.” In fact, fighting over what our schools should teach is part of the problem.

Across the country, including here in Florida, Republican-controlled legislatures have tried to ban incorporating lessons from the controversial New York Times “1619 Project,” or even elements of critical race theory. Some states already have banned these lessons.

It’s not hard to see why. Those on the political right and left in America don’t see the country, or its history, the same way. In fact, we seem to view opposing views as insulting to our very being.

The Pew Research Center found that those who identify as left-of-center in the U.S. and UK share more similar views about their respective countries and histories than people on the right. According to Pew, people who identify as left-of-center view their countries with shame while people on the right view their countries with pride.

Focus groups in U.S., UK find Left and Right see the same aspects of history through a very different lens.

Who decides what version of America should be taught in public education? The authoritarian impulse is to have whoever holds the reins of power decide, rather than allow ideas to compete on their merits alone.

Politics is a zero-sum game. If you want to learn critical race theory in Idaho, too bad – it’s already been banned.

The nature of these zero-sum fights between the Right and Left is why the Cato Institute’s Public Schooling Battle Map has documented nearly 100 politicized cultural fights over education in 2021 already.

It’s only going to get worse as more of our personal preferences, morals and viewpoints are politicized in an increasingly pluralistic nation.

Polarization may be impossible for education to fix. In fact, we may be setting public education up for failure if we try.

Private schools in Florida’s education choice programs operate largely outside of that political zero-sum game. Private schools are routinely bashed by critics over their freedom to teach from textbooks and curriculums they choose rather than what politicians have chosen. The same critics who bash a Christian school for teaching Creationism need to take a step back and realize that same freedom grants another school the right to teach critical race theory or the 1619 Project.

Public education can’t do everything, especially when we disagree so strongly about any goal beyond education’s most basic mission. Perhaps instead of trying to make private schools function like public ones we should be doing the opposite: allowing public schools the freedom to teach like private ones, with parents free to choose among the schools that best match their needs and values.

Forcing people into schools, certain ways of teaching or thinking, or banning competing ideas isn’t going to create unity. It’s going to do the opposite.

Getting back to basics – teaching students how to think rather than what to think – would be a great start as far as education missions go. That task alone is heroic enough without asking teachers to also be the saviors of American industry or democracy.

May 24, 2021 0 comment

Analysis Demographic Research Education Choice Education Savings Accounts Featured Gardiner Scholarship News Parental Choice Private School Scholarships School Choice Special Needs Education

New report shows majority of Gardiner funding was spent on tuition in 2019-20

Patrick R. Gibbons May 19, 2021

Patrick R. Gibbons

Families with children on Florida’s Gardiner Scholarship for students with special needs spent $117 million on private school tuition, books, curriculum, technology tutoring and more during the 2019-20 school year, according to a new report compiled by Step Up For Students.

While more than half (close to 57%) of scholarship monies was spent on school tuition, more than $50 million was spent on educational items not covered by other state scholarships, such as the McKay Scholarship, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and the Family Empowerment Scholarship.

Unlike those scholarships, Gardiner operates as an education savings account that allows parents to use scholarship funds to pay for a host of different educational options, such as curriculum, textbooks, school supplies, tutoring and afterschool or summer school programs. Unspent money rolls over from one year to the next, and parents can use the funds save for their child’s college expenses through college savings plans.

There were 14,319 students awarded Gardiner Scholarships during the 2019-20 school year, with 13,463 enrolled through Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog, compared to 11,393 students in the 2018-19 school year. The program funded $139 million in scholarships worth an average of $10,392.

Students ranged from 3 years old to 12th grade and comprised several different races, grade levels, prior school types and disabilities. Of those students, 62% had a diagnosis of autism; 10% intellectual disability; 8% rare disease; and 5% “high risk.” A little more than 3% of scholarship recipients had multiple diagnoses.

Other key findings in the report include:

· More Gardiner Scholarship students were enrolled in kindergarten through fifth grade (44%) than in middle or high school.

· There has been a slight increase in the percentage of Gardiner Scholarship students who are homeschooled students; 33 % were homeschooled in 2019-20 compared to 29.5% in 2014-15.

· More Gardiner Scholarship students live in Miami-Dade County (13%) than in any other county, followed by Orange County (8%).

· Around 84% of all scholarship funds awarded in 2019-20 were used by June 30, 2020.

· Only about 2.5% of families did not spend any of their scholarship funds in 2019-20 compared to 23.8% of families in 2014-15.

Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this month signed a bill that will merge Florida’s two scholarship programs for students with special needs beginning with the 2022-23 school year.

May 19, 2021 0 comment

Analysis Demographic Research Education Choice Featured Florida Tax Credit Scholarship News Private School Scholarships School Choice

Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program records 94.9% graduation rate for 2019-20

Patrick R. Gibbons May 7, 2021

Patrick R. Gibbons

Nearly 95% of seniors participating in the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program graduated from high school during the 2019-20 school year, the second highest graduation rate since the nonprofit that administers the state scholarships began tracking graduation rates in 2015.

Catholic schools had the highest graduation rate at 99.1%, while non-denominational schools had the lowest with 91.9% of seniors graduating according to an annual report released this week by Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.

Black and Hispanic students posted graduation rates of 93.5% and 94.4%, respectively. The graduation rate for Asian students was 98.1%.

Seniors were more likely to graduate from accredited private schools (97.8%) than unaccredited schools (88%). There was no measurable difference in graduation rates between students in dual-parent households and single-parent households.

For the 2019-20 school year, 557 private schools in Florida enrolled 3,642 students in 12^th grade. Overall, Step Up for Students awarded $653.5 million in scholarships to 107,873 students attending 1,850 private schools throughout the state.

Graduation rates are calculated using the same methods the National Center for Education Statistics uses to calculate graduation rates for private school students nationally. The method is not comparable to the cohort method used to calculate graduation rates for public school students.

The graduation rate is defined by the percentage of students who began in the 2019-20 school year as seniors and earned a standard diploma, special education diploma, or other certificate or diploma by the end of the academic year.

To compile the report, Step Up For Students used data from the Florida Department of Education along with a survey of Florida’s private schools. Just over 95% of respondents surveyed provided responses. Of those surveyed, 164 did not respond concerning their exit status, while 16 students who transferred to a public school were excluded from the analysis.

May 7, 2021 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Demographic Research Education and Public Policy Education Choice Featured Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Myth Busters Parental Choice Private Schools School Choice

Students remain on Florida’s education choice scholarship longer, but the myth remains

Patrick R. Gibbons April 28, 2021

Patrick R. Gibbons

Wrangling a myth: Contrary to repeated claims from critics, their misleading statistic about the number of years students find success with the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program are just plain wrong.

As the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program has grown, so has the value of the scholarships, the number of participating schools, parental satisfaction, and the number of years students remain in the program.

Tall tales told by the program’s critics have grown, too. Among other errors, those critics continue to misstate a statistic regarding student retention from an Urban Institute report released in 2017 and updated in 2019

The report found that scholarship students are more likely to attend and graduate from college. Despite the good news, critics spin a yarn about a statistic which notes that 61% of them used the scholarship for two years or less. This “drop-out rate,” they say, signals widespread dissatisfaction among parents and lots of low-quality private schools.

This myth struck like a tornado, whirling in and out of nearly every hearing and floor debate during the 2021 Florida legislative session.

Not only does this statistic fail to reflect reality today; it says nothing about program quality. In fact, the Urban Institute authors tried to correct the record when the myth was just a little, lonely dust devil.

“Our study finds positive effects on college enrollment and degree attainment, which makes it unlikely that broad dissatisfaction or dropping out is driving students to stop using the scholarship,” they wrote.

The authors speculated on possible reasons for the attrition rate in the study critics cite.

“This is likely attributable to the lower supply of private school schools [at the high school level] compared with private elementary or middle schools and to the fact that the scholarship amount was previously the same for all grade levels, despite high school tuition being higher,” they wrote.

Critics continue to ignore both explanations.

It’s worth noting that the Urban Institute examined students who utilized the scholarship between 2004 and 2010. Back then, scholarship values were worth far less, program eligibility restrictions were much higher, and there were far fewer participating private schools.

Attrition and years of participation over time

Since 2010, the Florida Tax Credit program has increased from 28,927 students attending 1,033 schools to 104,162 students attending 1,933 schools. Per-student scholarship amounts increased from $3,950 in 2010 (about $4,798 in today’s dollars) to about $6,800, while strict income eligibility rules have been relaxed to allow students to remain on the program longer while their parents receive small pay increases and promotions at work.

These factors have contributed to a significant reduction in the two-year attrition rate over time. Today, just 46% of students use the scholarship for two years or less. So, what explains this 46% two-year attrition rate?

Barriers remain, which keep students from staying longer on average. The biggest barrier reported by 36% of parents is a lack of private school options nearby. In fact, the number of schools offering high school grade levels is about half the number of schools offering elementary grades. And since many private schools do not offer free transportation, lack of a nearby private high school can be a major barrier to remaining on the scholarship program.

Florida Tax Credit Scholarship tuition gap, 2020-21

Cost is another factor. The gap between the scholarship value and tuition amount grows as students enter higher grades.

Florida’s scholarship values remain relatively flat, despite an increase in tuition in middle and high school. The gap between tuition/fees and scholarships is $2,947 in elementary school. That gap jumps to $3,837 when a student enters middle school, and to $4,638 for high school. Many families have more than one child on the program. These are daunting gaps for scholarship families who have an average household income of $32,638 per year.

There are several reasons why students leave the program, just as there are numerous reasons why students leave local public schools. Dissatisfaction with school quality may be one reason, but it isn’t a primary one. According to the most recent survey by EdChoice, 89% of parents were satisfied with their available private school options.

In April 2020, Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers the Tax Credit Scholarship program and hosts this blog, surveyed 1,111 parents asking why they removed their child from the program. Just 11% cited academic concerns. Another 3% cited problems with teachers or administrators, 2% said poor school discipline, and fewer than 1% cited school safety as reasons for leaving.

Twenty percent of parents who responded said they no longer used the scholarship because they moved. In fact, moving is a common challenge when it comes to educating lower-income students, who often attend more than one school within the same year.

Low-income students are most likely to have higher rates of migration between schools regardless of whether the school is public or private. For example, 45% of all students attending high-poverty schools in Hillsborough County, 90% of whom qualify for free or reduced-price meals, a close proxy for the scholarship program, left their school within one year. It cannot be concluded that parents found these schools to be of “atrocious quality,” because there are many factors impacting why low-income students exit a school.

Finally, it is worth noting that over the last five years, 78% of scholarship students chose to renew the scholarship each year, and that the average student uses a scholarship for 3.1 years. Some students return to the program in later years, and some do not. School choice, after all, is about giving parents and students options, not holding them hostage to a preferred educational option.

Consider this whirling myth of misinformation officially wrangled.

April 28, 2021 0 comment