SAFETY HARBOR, Fla. – Edelweiss Szymanski turns 10 on a Friday in December. She will celebrate the milestone by running a 5-kilometer race in Daytona Beach. The next day, she’s scheduled to compete in a triathlon.
No pizza party. No theme park.
How many 10-year-olds want to run three miles on their birthday, then swim, bike, and run some more the day after?
“This one does,” Lacey Szymanski said, pointing to her daughter with both index fingers.
Meet Edelweiss, a young triathlete on the rise who’s as tough as the flower she’s named after. Meet her brother, Spartacus, too, 14 months younger and just as tenacious.
The SkiSibs, as they are known throughout Florida’s triathlon community.
The SkiSibs: Spartacus and Edelweiss. (Photo by Roger Mooney)
Their bedrooms are filled with trophies, medals, and plaques – the spoils of reaching the podiums (finishing in the top three) at triathlons, road and bicycle races. The garage of their Safety Harbor home is packed with bicycles.
“We are an active family,” Lacey said.
Lacey and her husband, Jacek, have participated in triathlon relays.
Some mornings, Jacek and the kids can be found riding the bike trails around Pinellas County, waking as early as 3 a.m. so Jacek can get in a long ride before heading to his job as a sergeant with the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.
If they time it right, and they usually do, the trio will stop along the overlook on the Courtney Campbell Causeway and snack on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while they watch the sun rise over Tampa Bay.
“We really like watching the sunrise,” Edelweiss said.
She and Spartacus receive Florida education choice scholarships for students with unique abilities managed by Step Up For Students. Edelweiss is dyslexic. Spartacus has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They are home educated by Lacey, who taught in a private school for 10 years before the family adopted this educational format.
Edelweiss benefits from one-on-one instruction with her mom, while Spartacus is not required to sit at a desk and complete his assignments, something that was an issue when he attended a brick-and-mortar school.
“The scholarship has been a game-changer. It’s awesome that Florida offers this,” Lacey said. “I have my doctorate in education, so I'm really happy that I'm able to help them in the ways that I can and create a curriculum that is specialized to their individual needs, as well.”
The scholarship covers Spartacus’s occupational therapy, as well as art class and piano lessons for Edelweiss. And learning at home allows for flexible schedules. It’s not unusual for Spartacus, an early riser, to complete his math assignments before the sun is up.
Biking is the favorite part of a triathlon for Edelweiss. (Photo by Roger Mooney)
The family home borders a wetland, which is ideal for interactive science lessons. It also provided the sticks the kids used to carve their own forks, and the twigs Edelweiss used to create a bird’s nest.
“Her art style isn't cut and dry, like paint a picture of this penguin. It's more abstract,” Lacey said. “That’s the way her brain works. Music, art, and athletics are a lot easier for her. When dyslexia held her back from other things, she kind of poured herself into those things.”
Lacey was pregnant with her daughter, and she and Jacek had yet to settle on a name when she came across a music box she bought during a trip to Germany. It played the song “Edelweiss” from the movie “The Sound of Music.” An edelweiss is a stout flower that grows in the rugged high-altitude terrain of the Alps and the Carpathian mountain ranges in Europe and blooms in the winter.
“I thought, ‘That’s what I want to name my daughter,’” Lacey said.
She and her husband believe that people can become the personification of their names. That holds true with Edelweiss.
“She is very hearty, and it aligns with being a triathlete. She can endure a lot and has a high tolerance for the sport,” Lacey said. “And at the same time, it’s a very beautiful flower. It doesn't look like your normal flower. It's very different and unique, which is what she is.”
And Spartacus? Well, he was making a fist in his first ultrasound.
Jacek said he looked like Spartacus, the ex-slave who became a gladiator and led a rebellion against the Roman Republic in 71 BC.
“He said his name is going to be Spartacus, and I said, ‘Yeah, right. There's no way I would name my son Spartacus.’ And here we are,” Lacey said.
“We do get odd looks when we call his name at a triathlon,” Jacek said. “I’m not saying it’s like yelling ‘Fire!’ in a crowd, but almost.”
You will often find Edelweiss on top of the podium on race day. (Photo courtesy of the Szymanski family)
Edelweiss competed in her first triathlon when she was 5. The family belonged to a local YMCA, and Lacey saw a post about the race on the morning of the event. So, she woke Edelweiss and asked her if she wanted to give it a try. Edelweiss said yes.
“It gave me something to do,” she said.
The race consisted of one lap in the 25-meter pool, a half-mile bike ride, and a quarter-mile run. Competing on a bike that had pom-poms and a basket on the handlebars, Edelweiss won her age group.
She had one question for her mom when she finished.
“When can we do this again?”
The answer? As often as possible.
She and Spartacus have moved up to sprint triathlons – 400-yard swim, 8.1-mile bike ride, and a 5K run.
The hardest leg for Edelweiss is the run. The best part, she said, is crossing the finish line.
“Because I don’t have to run anymore,” she said.
She’s been known to finish a race in her socks. Once, when she developed blisters and tossed her shoes halfway through the race, and another time when she was having trouble getting them on during the transition from the bike to the run and didn’t want to waste more time.
Jacek was born in Poland and immigrated to the United States at 19. He was an avid cycler in his native country and passed that love on to his children.
Edelweiss and Spartacus also compete in long-distance cycling races, where they are often the top finishers in their 7-11 age group.
“They goof around when they’re going for a ride with dad,” Jacek said. “But something switches when they are in the competitive world. They put on their game face.”
Before being immersed in the world of triathlons, Edelweiss was all about her ballet lessons.
“She was very into ballet, but now she doesn’t want to go back,” Lacey said. “It’s not the same adrenaline rush.”
Their weekends are loaded with triathlons across the state and cycling races as far north as Virginia. Lacey keeps track of the schedule.
“It’s our lifestyle now,” Lacey said. “We’re always in the water or on bikes, doing something like that. Edelweiss doesn’t feel like she’s actually competing. She’s doing what she loves. Spartacus is a ball of fire, too. Both of them together just constantly amazes me about what they're capable of and the grit that they have to compete.”
If education freedom were a hockey game, Florida just scored a Texas hat trick.
For the fourth consecutive year, Florida was ranked the No. 1 state for education freedom for K-12 students and families in The Heritage Foundation’s annual Education Freedom Report Card. The 2025 Heritage rankings come after a landmark year of state legislative sessions that delivered wins for students and families.
Florida leaders credited the state’s ranking to policies that give parents control over their children’s education dollars, offering a plethora of choices, including a la carte courses provided by school districts and charter schools.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs HB 1, which offered families universal eligibility to Florida education choice scholarship programs.
“In Florida, we are committed to ensuring parents have the power to make the education decisions that are best for their child,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis, who in 2023 signed legislation that offered universal eligibility for K-12 state education choice scholarship programs that allow families to direct their dollars toward the best options for their children. “Florida offers a robust array of educational choices, which has solidified our state as a national leader in education freedom, parental power, and overall K-12 education.”
Commissioner of Education Anastasios Kamoutsas said earning the top ranking for four years affirms the state’s long-term commitment to families.
“Under Governor DeSantis’ leadership, Florida will continue honoring parents’ right to choose the best educational option for their child’s individualized needs. I am proud that Florida offers so many educational options that parents can have confidence in.”
Since the Education Freedom Report Card began in 2022, Florida has earned the top ranking every year. The report card uses five categories: school choice, transparency, regulatory freedom, civic education, and spending to rank states.
In addition to Florida receiving the overall top spot for Education Freedom, it also earned high rankings in the following categories:
Earlier this year, the Sunshine State also earned national recognition for putting dollars behind its policies. In January, the national advocacy group EdChoice put Florida first on its list of each state’s spending on education choice programs proportional to total education spending.
According to the EdChoice report, Florida became the first state to spend more than 10% of its combined private choice and public-school expenditures on its choice programs, rising from an 8% spending share in 2024.
Florida also reached a historic milestone when, for the first time, more than half of all K-12 students were enrolled in an educational choice option. During the 2023–24 school year, 1,794,697 students, out of the state’s approximately 3.5 million K-12 population, used a learning option other than their assigned district school.
Saltwater Studies in South Florida was founded by education entrepreneur Christa Jewett. It is among the growing number of a la carte providers in Florida made possible by the state's education savings account programs.
Every state’s public education system is a market with supply (i.e., instruction) and demand (i.e., students needing instruction). These markets function as the operating systems for public education. Unfortunately, since the mid-1800s, these markets have been poorly designed and managed. As a result, every state’s public education operating system is deeply flawed.
Just as digital applications fail when their underlying operating systems malfunction, public education programs fail when the market mechanisms beneath them are ineffective. This helps explain why nearly every major reform initiative since "A Nation at Risk" (1983), from site-based decision-making and outcome-based education to teacher empowerment and regulatory accountability, has failed to deliver sustained, systemic improvement.
Public education will not realize sustainable improvement until each state’s public education market becomes more effective and efficient.
Public education’s primary problem is that the supply side of each state’s market is dominated by a government monopoly that also controls most demand side funding. A necessary correction is giving families greater control over a significant portion of the public funds allocated for their student’s education. Thanks to decades of advocacy by the education choice movement, families in 18 states may now use public funds to purchase education services and products from government and nongovernment providers.
But family-controlled funding alone is not enough. Every aspect of the design and management of public education markets must be improved, not just their demand side.
In high-performing markets, supply and demand are in sync; transactions are easy, and transactional costs low; information to guide decision making is transparent and accessible; resource allocation is effective and efficient; risks are managed appropriately, and customer satisfaction is consistently high.
The education choice movement has historically focused on increasing the number of families who control a portion of their students’ education funding while putting less emphasis on ensuring the market’s supply side grows in tandem. This imbalance often causes demand to exceed supply, driving up costs without improving quality and leaving families unable to access the best educational environments for each child. A recent study in Florida found that 41,000 students were awarded education choice scholarships last year but never used them, in part because there was no space in their desired schools.
Policymakers can help by enacting policies that better align supply with demand, ensuring students have access to the options they need.
During the 2025-26 school year, families nationally will spend about $6.75 billion in public funds customizing their children’s education. Emerging Artificial Intelligence tools are already showing promise in streamlining compliance, verifying transactions in real time, and safeguarding public dollars. By adopting these technologies wisely, states can protect taxpayers while reducing bureaucratic burdens on families and providers.
Families shape public education markets through their purchasing decisions. When those decisions are well-informed, they drive higher quality and better prices. Yet in every state, families lack easy access to reliable information about provider performance and pricing. To support better choices, states should create user-friendly tools that provide transparent, trustworthy information. Without this transparency, families are navigating markets in the dark.
Every market decision carries risks and consumes resources. For example, when states implement policies that drive high demand without growing supply, costs rise, and families lose access to the best options for their children. Effective markets require careful regulation and risk management to balance innovation with accountability while ensuring resources are allocated efficiently.
States are responsible for the design, implementation, and ongoing management of public education markets. Their goal should be market optimization, with family satisfaction as the ultimate indicator of success. An optimized market is one where all components function well together, and widespread family satisfaction suggests that children’s needs are consistently being met.
Public education markets are interdependent ecosystems and must be managed as such. When states align supply and demand, reduce friction, expand transparency, and manage risk wisely, they create conditions where every family can access instruction tailored to their child’s needs.
Lasting improvement will not come from the next reform fad. It will come from building healthy markets that empower families and unlock the full potential of every student.
Arizonans have a pet peeve involving people from “back East” who judge us before they understand us. The Washington Post jumped into this with both feet by publishing a story with the headline Public schools are closing as Arizona’s school voucher program soars.
The story, which prominently features the long-troubled Roosevelt Elementary School District’s decision to close five schools, has multiple problems. The paragraphs below will document one of the main problems. Before moving to that, the reader should note that multiple people made efforts by both email and phone to alert the Post reporter to these data during the research process, including the sharing of many of the links to the same state data sources that will be used below.
Arizona K-12 choice is complex with multiple types of choice operating simultaneously and interacting with each other: the nation’s largest state charter school sector, multiple private choice programs, and (the granddaddy of them all) district open enrollment. No one should fault anyone for failing to appreciate the complexity of a situation from afar, but ignoring data to formulate a fundamentally misleading narrative is another matter.
Just to set the stage, under the Arizona education formula, spending follows the child. From the perspective of a school district, it makes little financial difference as to whether a child transfers to another district, enrolls in a charter, takes an ESA, or moves to California -- you either have enrollment to get funded, or you do not. Because districts also generate local funding with enrollment, they are (by a wide margin) the best-funded K-12 system in the state on a per-pupil basis on average.
The Arizona Department of Education tracks public school students by district of residence and by public district or charter school of attendance. The 2025 report includes a tab called “District by Attendance,” and it reveals that of the total public-school students residing with the boundary of Roosevelt Elementary and attending a Roosevelt Elementary district school amounts to 6,551 students. The same report reveals that 5,764 students live within the boundaries of Roosevelt but attend charter schools. Finally, the open enrollment report documents that 2,741 students live within the boundaries of Roosevelt but attend other district schools through open enrollment.
Separate reports from the Arizona Department of Education document ESA use by school district. The most recent quarterly report currently available finds that 803 students reside within the borders of Roosevelt Elementary and are enrolled in the ESA program (see page 22). If we stopped the story there, the conclusion that the fiscal impact on Roosevelt Elementary from other school districts was more than three times larger than that of the ESA program would appear unavoidable. “Public schools are closing as a majority of families choose other public schools” does not seem quite as exciting but would be far more accurate.
But we should not stop the story there. Another report from the Arizona Department of Education tracks not only which districts ESA students reside in, but also what school they previously attended. Page 17 of this report reveals that the number of students residing in Roosevelt Elementary district and which previously attended a Roosevelt Elementary school stood at 129. Put it all together, and the picture looks like this:
School boards don’t close five schools in a 6,551-student district because of the loss of 129 students. Enrollment in Roosevelt Elementary began to decline years before the ESA program existed. “Public schools are closing as Arizona voucher enrollment soars” is akin to “Sun rises as rooster crows” as it pertains to Roosevelt Elementary. If the ESA program did not exist, we have every reason to believe that a large majority of ESA students would employ other choice programs.
The fault lies not in Roosevelt’s stars, but in itself -- a large majority of the community it serves prefers schools other than the ones they are operating. Statewide Arizona school districts spend an estimated billion dollars annually on underutilized and vacant school buildings -- funds they could be spending on teacher salaries and academic recovery, and which also happens to approximately equal the budget of the ESA program, which 90,000 Arizona students use for K-12 education.
The Roosevelt school board has decided to focus their efforts, and good luck to them. The unstated thesis of the Washington Post’s narrative, however, is that readers should sympathize with the interests of Roosevelt employees rather than with those of the Roosevelt families exercising agency in the education of their children. This is the greatest misdirection of all. We fund schools first for the benefit of children, not the adults working in the schools.
This is all an all-too-common sort of thing in K-12 journalism these days, and it is hardly unique to Arizona. Florida, for example, has no shortage of hugely exaggerated claims regarding the impact of choice on school districts. Author Amanda Ripley, interviewed for a book she wrote on deep problems of journalism, noted the “strange and insular world of journalism prizes,” which encourage simplistic “us versus them” stories. “This adversarial model that we’ve got going in education, journalism, and politics no longer serves us. There’s a good guy and a bad guy, and everything’s super clear; it just breaks down. And we keep awarding prizes in that model. But 99 percent of stories are not that clear-cut,” Ripley noted.
What is clear-cut: Roosevelt Elementary may have 99 problems, but losing 129 kids to the ESA program ranks far from being one.
The Rev. H.K. Matthews, front row, second from left, and John Kirtley, front row, far left, joined more than 6,000 marchers at a 2010 Tallahassee rally to support expanding the income-based Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program.
By John Kirtley
The Rev. H.K. Matthews passed away Monday at the age of 97. As I urge you to read in this obituary, he was one of the towering figures in the Florida civil rights movement.
He was arrested over 30 times fighting for equal rights in Northwest Florida. He was beaten, along with John Lewis and other brave activists, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in their first attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery. There is now a park named in his honor in Pensacola. You can also read his autobiography, “Victory After The Fall.”.
On a 2010 visit to Pensacola to recruit schools for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program, former Step Up For Students grassroots organizer Michael Benjamin and I met the operator of a faith-based school in town. He urged us to meet with Rev. Matthews, who he thought might respond well to the social justice message of the scholarship program. At the time, the average household income of our students was less than $30,000, and 75% were minorities. Michael and I said we would love to meet him.
Rev. Matthews didn’t say much during our initial visit; Michael and I explained how the scholarship program empowered low-income families to choose a different school if the one they were assigned to wasn’t working for them. He seemed to just take it all in but offered neither affirmation nor disagreement.
Almost as an afterthought, I invited him to a march and rally we were having the next month in Tallahassee. We needed the legislature to pass a bill to expand the scholarship program to relieve our waitlist, and we asked scholarship families to come to the Capitol to show their support. To my surprise, he agreed to attend.
On that day, over 6,000 people marched from the convention center to the Capitol. I invited Rev. Matthews to walk in front of the crowd with other faith leaders. Normally I would never walk in the front row, but I wanted to make sure everything went smoothly for him. He was very quiet as the huge crowd marched.
When we had gathered for the rally in the Capitol, I placed him in a prominent seat on the stage. A few minutes into the event, he motioned me over and asked if he could speak to the crowd. I had no idea what he was going to say, but I wasn’t going to say no. I went to the minister running our show and asked him to introduce Rev. Matthews.
What would he say? Was he with us?
I soon had my answer.
“This reminds me of the old movement,” he said. “Seeing thousands walking in the streets, fighting for the right to determine their own future, to fight for what is best for their children. When I worked with Dr. King back in the day …”
When he said those words, there was a murmur in the crowd, both students and adults. These kids had read about Dr. King in their history books. Some of them knew that there were not one but two marches across the Pettus Bridge, and here was someone who was there at the first attempt, someone who took the blows.
He was indeed with us.
Immediately after the rally, Rev. Matthews was swarmed by students young and old, some asking questions about his time with Dr. King, some young ones who just wanted to touch him — I suppose just to make sure this hero was real. They did not let him go for at least 20 minutes.
I could tell at the time this moved him. He told me so later. After that day he would call me to ask if there was anything he could do to help the movement. We had him appear at events with donors, governors, and legislators.
He would lead another march for us in 2016, when over 10,000 people came to protest the lawsuit filed by the Florida teachers union demanding that the courts shut down the Tax Credit Scholarship, which would evict 80,000 poor kids from their schools. That day Rev. Matthews was joined at the front of the procession by Martin Luther King III, the son of the man Matthews marched with 50 years prior. You can watch a 60-second video of that march here.
I had the pleasure of joining him at his church in Brewton, Alabama, where he moved in later years. He was being honored for his years of service to that church. I was honored, though very surprised, when he called me up to speak that day. Luckily, the words to praise him came easily.
They come again easily today, but not without a few tears.
How fortunate I was to have my life intersect with his, however unlikely that would have been to me before this movement changed the course of my life.
How fortunate the education freedom movement was to have his blessing and his involvement.
How fortunate the state of Florida was to have his tireless efforts fighting for civil rights.
How fortunate, all.
Rest in peace, Rev. Matthews.
John Kirtley is founder and chairman of Step Up For Students.
Wisconsin students celebrate National School Choice Week at the state capitol.
By George Mitchell
The parents of nearly 60,000 Wisconsin children choose to enroll them in one of the state’s private school choice programs.
Giving parents that choice is popular public policy. Polling shows voter support, across party lines, in all Wisconsin media markets.
Opposition is strong from the public education establishment and elected officials they support.
Exhibit A: Jill Underly, superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported earlier this year that “[S]he’d like to see the 35-year voucher program ultimately eliminated.”
Her position is directly at odds with the DPI’s ranking of schools. Official DPI Report Cards give the private schools higher marks despite funding at a fraction of public school levels,
A new analysis from School Choice Wisconsin (SCW) documents the striking productivity edge of private choice schools.
The SCW report relies solely on DPI data and uses conservative assumptions that negate possible school choice bias. For example, the report compares students from families with income eligibility limits with students from families of all incomes. Further, it understates a significant revenue advantage of traditional public schools by excluding federal aid.
The pioneering Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) shows the greatest productivity advantage. While per pupil revenue in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) is 38% higher than in MPCP schools, DPI’s Report Card ranking of MPS is 21% lower. See below.
| DPI Report Card Score (Scale 0-100) | Per Pupil Revenue | |
| MPCP* | 70.8 | $11,905 |
| MPS** | 55.7 | $16,442 |
* Eligibility limited to families at or below 300% of Federal Poverty Limit.
** MPS families of all income levels.
The following compares per pupil revenue and DPI Report Card scores for the Racine Parental Choice Program and the Racine Unified School District.
| DPI Report Card Score (Scale 0-100) | Per Pupil Revenue | |
| RPCP* | 72.7 | $11,905 |
| RUSD** | 61.3 | $14,629 |
* Eligibility limited to families at or below 300% of Federal Poverty Limit.
** RUSD families of all income levels.
Lastly, the following compares scores and revenue for the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program (students outside Milwaukee and Racine) with schools outside of Milwaukee and Racine.
| DPI Report Card Score (Scale 0-100) | Per Pupil Revenue | |
| WPCP* | 71.8 | $11,905 |
| Statewide Public** | 69.8 | $15,340 |
* Eligibility limited to families at or below 220% of Federal Poverty Limit.
** Families of all income levels. Excludes MPS and RUSD.
The SCW findings reinforce a 2019 study by Corey DeAngelis, Ph.D., a scholar whose research has appeared in: Social Science Quarterly; School Effectiveness and School Improvement; Educational Review; Peabody Journal of Education; Journal of School Choice; and Journal of Private Enterprise.
Separate scholarship, by Patrick Wolf, Ph.D., and DeAngelis, examined the effects of Milwaukee’s parental choice program on adult criminal activity and paternity suits. They found that “exposure to the program … is associated with a reduction of around 53 percent in drug convictions, 86 percent in property damage convictions, and 38 percent in paternity suits. The program effects tend to be largest for males and students with lower levels of academic achievement at baseline.”
A study for the Annenberg Institute at Brown University found: “As of 2018, [Milwaukee choice] students have spent more total years in a four-year college than their MPS peers. The MPCP students in the grade three through eight sample attained college degrees at rates that are statistically significantly higher than those of their matched MPS peers.”
George Mitchell is a School Choice Wisconsin volunteer.
References
DeAngelis, C.A. (2019, May 14). A wise investment: The productivity of public and private schools of choice in Wisconsin. School Choice Wisconsin. https://schoolchoicewi.org/news/research/return-on-investment/
DeAngelis, C.A., & Wolf, P.J. (2019, February 26). Private school choice and character: More evidence from Milwaukee. School Choice Wisconsin. https://schoolchoicewi.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Private-School-Choice-and-Character-More-Evidence-from-Milwaukee.pdf
Meyerhofer, K. (2025, March 28). Wisconsin superintendent calls for cutting school choice. Her opponent is mum on program expansion. Journal Sentinel.https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2025/03/28/wisconsin-superintendent-jill-underly-calls-for-cutting-school-choice/82652247007/
School Choice Wisconsin. (2023, August 30). The cost-effectiveness of Wisconsin’s private school choice programs. https://schoolchoicewi.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/The-Cost-Effectiveness-of-Wisconsins-Private-School-Choice-Programs.pdf
School Choice Wisconsin. (2025, August 12). Wisconsin’s Most Cost-Effective K-12 Platform. https://schoolchoicewi.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Wisconsins-Most-Cost-Effective-K-12-Program.pdf
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. (2024, November 19). School & district report cards. https://apps2.dpi.wi.gov/reportcards/
Wolf, P.J., Witte, J.F., & Kisida, B. (2019, August 12). Do Vouchers Students Attain Higher Levels of Education? Extended Evidence from the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. https://edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/ai19-115.pdf
Homeschool student William Alexander enjoys a book at The Homeschool Hive, a store in Tampa, Florida, that offers materials and services to families across the Sunshine State and nationally.
TAMPA, Fla. — When you think of homeschooling, what comes to mind? For many families, it’s a journey filled with creativity, flexibility, and personalized learning. Whether you're following a traditional curriculum, taking a hybrid approach, or crafting your own adventure with a Florida K-12 education savings account, parent-directed learning allows families to find the best fit for their children’s needs.
But no matter the style, every family needs support and reliable resources. That’s where The Homeschool Hive comes in. It’s more than just a store. It’s a community that helps families build confidence and find the tools they need to thrive.
A store with a heartbeat
The Homeschool Hive was founded by Kimberlee Tucker, a former classroom teacher and homeschool parent. Her journey began out of necessity. Years ago, Tucker was searching for the right materials and support to educate her daughter, who has unique learning needs. What she discovered was a gap in resources and understanding, especially for parents opting out of a traditional school system.
So, she created what she couldn’t find. Today, parents who visit The Homeschool Hive find a warm, welcoming place that offers curriculum, advice, enrichment tools, and a judgment-free space for families to learn and grow.
“Kimberlee Tucker truly understands how to find the right curriculum for each individual student,” said Lisa Mezzei, who has relied on Tucker, a certified educator, for the past 10 years to conduct annual evaluations for her son, Matthew. “The process has given Matthew a real sense of ownership in his education.”
A store that's truly for everyone
Step inside The Homeschool Hive and you’ll find a thoughtfully curated selection of materials for every subject and learning style. There are full curriculum kits, hands-on science activities, history unit studies, sensory-friendly items, reading support tools, and even educational games and fidgets.
Whether a child is a budding scientist, a reluctant reader, or needs a more tactile learning approach, the Hive has something for everyone. Parents say the best part is personalized support. Tucker and her team listen, guide, and recommend based on each family's needs.
“The Homeschool Hive is such a low pressure, welcoming place,” parent Anissa Stern said. You can visit several times to explore what works best for your child, and the staff, many of whom have children with unique abilities, are incredibly helpful. It’s a fantastic resource for any homeschooling family.”
Kelli Alexander agreed.
“The Homeschool Hive has truly guided our homeschooling journey. It is one of my children’s favorite places to go. Everything is educational, fun, and engaging. I have found so many helpful supplements and resources that reinforce what they have already learned, and I even do their yearly testing through the store.”
Alexander recommends families visit twice, once with their kids, so they can explore and find materials that excite them, and again solo to get one-on-one advice from the staff. “It really makes a difference,” she added
Parent Kelli Alexander, second from left, regularly volunteers at The Homeschool Hive with her family.
Alexander's children especially love the extras they’ve found there, including books, games, and fidgets that make learning more enjoyable. They also look forward to the store’s community events, like the Christmas party, where her kids enjoy volunteering and connecting with other homeschool families.
From frustration to inspiration
Many parents come to The Homeschool Hive unsure of where to begin. It can feel overwhelming trying to choose the right curriculum or learning tools, especially if you’re new to homeschooling or supporting a child with special learning needs. But what sets the Hive apart is its heart.
Tucker and her team meet families where they are. They provide encouragement, advice, and solutions that are realistic and effective. Parents leave feeling seen, heard, and empowered to take the next step in their child’s education.
Tucker’s daughter, the inspiration behind it all, has since graduated from high school and is now engaged to be married. That journey of learning and growth is something Tucker says she wants for every family that walks through her doors.
A store that goes beyond the basics
Kimberlee Tucker shows off Bernadette Bee, a therapy trained dog and the store's new mascot.
Tucker doesn’t just stock big brands. She travels to toy and education conferences across the country, sourcing creative and engaging tools from family-owned and independent companies. These unique items aren’t just educational; they’re fun, hands-on, and often perfect for gifts or seasonal enrichment.
For those not local to Florida, The Homeschool Hive ships nationwide and has become a go-to resource for families across the country. Families don’t have to be on a Florida education choice scholarship to purchase from the store. Everyone’s welcome. With growing demand, Tucker is considering opening a second location soon. She recently expanded the staff to include Bernadette Bee.
"She is my new shop dog," Tucker said. "She is therapy trained and training to be a service dog for me."
Perfectly timed for the educational shift
As school choice continues to expand in Florida and across the country, families are exploring new ways to educate their children. The Homeschool Hive is perfectly positioned to support that shift. Whether you're a brand new homeschool or scholarship parent or several years into the journey, this is the place where guidance, resources, and inspiration come together.
“If you are just starting your homeschooling journey, you have to visit the Homeschool Hive first," parent Lisa Mezzei said. "It is the perfect place to get support, explore options, and find what really works for your child.”
Last week, I had the opportunity to make a presentation about how lawmakers can support teachers who want to start their own schools. The four key features:
2. Formula funding/demand-driven funding: Whoever applies for a choice program should receive funding if eligible.
3. Avoidance of anti-competitive accreditation requirements: Don’t ask your startup schools to operate without funding from the choice program while incumbent/accredited schools receive choice funding.
4. Exempt private schools from municipal zoning: Old hat for charter schools, needed for private schools as well.
Florida is the only state your humble author is aware of that has taken all four of these steps. This makes Ron Matus’ new study "Going With Plan B” all the more important. Despite a statewide increase of 705 private schools, 41,000 Florida families applied for, received, and ultimately did not use an ESA. Matus surveyed thousands of these parents to learn why.
The lack of school space was the No. 1 reason Florida families found themselves as non-participants. Reasons two and three were related to costs, which can also be thought of as a supply issue.
The “Going with Plan B” study is very interesting and should be studied carefully by Florida policymakers. For now, however, let us focus on the other states with choice programs that lack the four critical elements listed above. If FLORIDA has a supply issue, your state, sitting at one out of four, or two out of four, should take note: It is likely to be even worse in a state near you.
By Ron Matus and Dava Cherry
Florida’s choice-driven education system is the most dynamic and diverse in America, but it’s facing new tests. This year, 41,000 Florida students were awarded school choice scholarships but never used them.
We wanted to know why, so we surveyed their parents.
The 2,739 who responded had a lot to tell us. Not only about supply-side challenges, but about the extent to which families are migrating between different types of schools, and their expectations for finding just the right ones.
As education choice takes root across America, we thought other states could learn from these parents, which is why we boiled their responses down into a new report, “Going With Plan B.”
We saw three main takeaways:
A third of the respondents (34.7%) said there were no available seats at the school they wanted. This, even though the number of Florida private schools has grown 31% over the past 10 years. Meanwhile, a fifth of the respondents (19.7%) said the scholarship amount wasn’t enough to cover tuition and fees.
Even without scholarships, a third of the respondents (36.5%) switched school types (like going from a traditional public school to a charter school). And between their child’s prior school and the school they ended up in, more experienced a positive rather negative shift in satisfaction (20.4% to 10.5%). We didn’t see that coming.
Two thirds of the respondents said they’d apply for the scholarships again, including 63% of those who switched school types, and 55.5% of those who were satisfied after doing so.
Things got better, it seems, but not better enough.
Perhaps as choice has grown, so too have parents’ expectations.
See the full report here.
Dava Cherry is the former director of enterprise data and research at Step Up For Students, and a former public school teacher.
A recent interview by Tyler Cowen of John Arnold has been making the rounds in ed reform circles, see Michael Goldstein’s write up here. Here is a taste of the interview:
Tyler Cowen: There’s a common impression—both for start-ups and for philanthropy—that doing much with K–12 education or preschool just hasn’t mattered that much or hasn’t succeeded that much. Do you agree or disagree?
John Arnold: I agree. I think the ed reform movement has been, as a whole, a significant disappointment. I think there have been isolated pockets of excellence. It’s been very difficult to learn how to scale that. I think that’s largely true of many social programs or many programs that are delivered by people to people, that you can find a single site that works extraordinarily well because they have a fantastic leader, and that leader might be able to open up a few more sites. But then, when you start to scale it to 50 sites, and start to go across the nation, it all mean-reverts back to what the whole system is providing.
“We’re a dispirited rebel alliance of do-gooders,” Goldstein writes gloomily, but the underlying premises deserve scrutiny, as it strikes me as entirely too pessimistic. Let us for instance look at the academic growth rates for charter schools in Arnold’s home state of Texas as recorded by the Stanford Educational Opportunity Project. Each dot is a Texas charter school, and green dots on or above the zero line display an average rate of academic growth at or above having learned one grade level per year:
This chart deserves a bit of your time to marvel at. While receiving far less total taxpayer funding per student, the Texas charter sector has not only created a large number of schools with high academic growth, but they also place competitive pressure on nearby district schools to improve their academic outcomes. Texas charter schools have not cured the world’s pain, nor have they dried every tear from our eyes. It is hard for me, however, to view it as anything other than a tremendous academic success, and Texas is not alone. Here is the same chart for charter schools in Arizona:
Again, we see far more high academic growth green-dot schools than low academic growth blue-dot schools. Once again, this sector is a bargain for taxpayers, and the sector placed competitive pressure on districts to improve. By the way, Arizona has a larger number of charter schools in low-poverty areas than Texas. That helped crack open high-demand district schools to open enrollment, which is why a real Fresh Prince can go to school in Scottsdale but not in Bel Air or Highland Park in Texas, which opened a vast new supply of choice seats in school districts. The do-gooder rebel alliance, it turns out, made a serious political and educational error when they effectively in a variety of ways excluded suburban areas.
You live and (hopefully) learn. Speaking of Bel Air, behold the magnificence of the academic growth of California’s charter school sector:
Oh, and then there is the 2024 NAEP to consider:
If you do not live in a state whose name starts and ends with the letter “o” you are likely to be happy with your charter sector’s performance vis-à-vis districts, which admittedly, is a low bar. Of course, all this data is messy and neither the growth measures developed by Stanford nor the NAEP proficiency data above capture long-term outcomes- such as do schools produce good and productive people who are well-prepared to exercise citizenship. We are looking through a glass darkly.
The do-gooder education reform alliance should indeed take stock of which efforts produced meaningful results, and which proved to be costly quagmires, and recalibrate their efforts accordingly. To paraphrase the Bard: the education reform movement has 99 problems, but the inability to scale success in choice programs ain’t one.
