Everything seemed perfect when Alison Rini prepared to open her dream school, one that would give kids an opportunity to learn at their own level and progress at their own pace.
The timing: The state had recently passed legislation that established universal eligibility for state K-12 scholarship programs. Rini could rely on a mix of scholarship and philanthropy dollars to keep tuition free for families.
The location: Her new microschool, Star Lab, would open in an unused clubhouse Rini had arranged to use at a government housing complex in Newtown, a community in Sarasota with a large population of low-income, minority students who struggled in reading. It had previously been a day care center and summer camp. It had classrooms and a playground.
Though it can be challenging for school founders to secure such locations before they are able to collect tuition, Rini said the community was supportive.
Until she walked into city hall.
“That triggered a 22-month, $130,000 approval process,” she said. “Once the building was designated as a school, an entirely new set of regulations applied.”
Rini, a former public school teacher and administrator, shared details of her ordeal with attendees at Harvard University’s fifth annual Emerging Schools Models Conference. This year’s theme was Broadening the Landscape for Choice and included sessions on universal eligibility, microschools, outdoor schools and the potential effects of the new federal Education Freedom Tax Credit Scholarship Program, which launches Jan. 1, 2027.
Rini participated in a panel whose topic was “Nowhere to Go: Addressing School Supply Shortages.” Other panelists included Corey DeAngelis, a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and Ron Matus, director of research and special projects at Step Up For Students, a nonprofit organization that manages K-12 scholarship programs in Florida.
DeAngelis gave an overview of problems in Arizona, where critics have called for more regulation of its education savings account programs.
“I think those changes will have unintended consequences,” he said. “If we concede to those who want to heavily regulate these programs, they'll continue demanding more restrictions. If parents become less satisfied, support for the programs will erode. In Arizona, more than 100,000 families are currently using the ESA program. If those families become frustrated, they may not fight to protect the program in the future. But if they value it, they will defend it.”
Matus focused on challenges involved in building up the supply of providers needed to meet the increasing demand for learning options in Florida, where more than half the state’s students use some form of education choice. Responses to a Step Up survey conducted during the 2024-25 school year of 41,000 parents who chose not to use their scholarships showed the chief reason was a lack of seats available at their desired schools. That was followed by concerns about scholarships not providing enough money to completely cover tuition. Others cited transportation issues, including the desired school’s distance from their home or work conflicts.
“All of those findings point to supply-side challenges,” Matus said.
Matus said those findings were expected. However, there were also surprises.
About 63% of the parents who applied already had their children in a choice school. Even more surprising, Matus noted, was that most of those parents reported being satisfied. Overall, about two-thirds of the parents said they would apply again. The percentage was slightly higher among Black, Hispanic and lower-income parents.
“Now they see so many options emerging on the landscape. So, all the time, I think they’re realizing that it’s no longer a situation where they just have to find something better,” Matus said. “They’re realizing they can have exactly what they want, and I don’t know if I’m going too far out on a limb here by suggesting that, but it’s my takeaway.”
Increasing the number of providers would make it possible for more families to find that perfect fit. That means removing barriers, such as those Rini faced when she tried to open Star Lab.
For Rini to serve more than five students, the local fire marshal said she would have to pay for a costly sprinkler system for the 3,500 square-foot leased building, which already had five exterior exits that had been considered sufficiently safe for a day care center and summer camp.
An expert on regulatory reform told her about an alternative fire safety compliance process authorized under state law. However, local officials were reluctant to use it.
“I eventually spoke with the state fire marshal, who acknowledged that universal school choice had expanded rapidly and that many related regulations had not yet been updated,” Rini said. “What struck me most throughout the process was the inertia, the red tape. Regulations had simply not caught up with policy changes.”
So, Rini opened Star Lab with five students, the maximum number allowed before being classified as a school.
City officials, surprised to see the doors open, stopped by and said, “You don’t have permission.”
“Count ‘em,” Rini fired back.
A donor eventually paid for the required sprinkler system, allowing her to add students.
The Legislature also passed HB 1285, which allows libraries, community service organizations, museums, performing arts venues, theaters, cinemas or houses of worship to accommodate a private school without founders having to comply with local land-use and zoning restrictions. In 2026, the lawmakers approved SB 182, which gave additional flexibility to private schools enrolling 150 or fewer students in commercial or mixed-use zoning districts.
“We had 20 kids, and then we outgrew the building,” Rini said.
When she moved to open a second campus at the Boys & Girls Club, the experience was “completely different.”
A new city attorney reviewed her proposal and approved it in about 15 minutes with no additional costs.
As she walked out with the zoning consultant, Rini felt as if she were shaking.
“You know, I was like, ‘How did this happen?’ That was so amazing, you know, the local government is really catching up with the intention of state law. He said, ‘No, you just saw state law trump local government.’”
For the fifth consecutive year, a national group ranked Florida as the top state in education freedom.
The Heritage Foundation, a national think tank, named the Sunshine State No. 1 overall in its annual Education Freedom Report Card, which ranks states on a variety of metrics, including active education choice programs, academic transparency, teacher freedom, the return on investment of the state’s education spending, and civics education.
Finishing behind Florida were Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, and Iowa, jumping 34 spots in civics over last year.
"In the backdrop of the Trump administration working to wind down the U.S. Department of Education, states like Florida and Iowa have met the moment by reclaiming more education responsibilities, which our nation's founders always intended, and providing families with more education choice,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said in a news release. “More states need to provide families with K-12 education savings account programs that allow them to choose learning environments that align with their values and work best for their children."
During the 2024–25 school year, 53% of all Florida’s K–12 students — 1,889,532 children — attended a public, private, or home education option of their parents’ or guardians’ choice. Just one year after crossing the 50% threshold for the first time, Florida’s school choice participation grew by nearly 100,000 additional students.
To see the Heritage Foundation’s full report, go here.
Florida's education choice movement has transformed learning for millions of families, but the next generation of reforms will require expanding options, modernizing funding and continuing to trust parents, a panel of state education leaders said Tuesday.
The discussion, hosted by the James Madison Institute, featured former Gov. Jeb Bush, who spearheaded the education choice movement that put Florida two decades ahead of other states that have recently established choice programs. Joining him were state Sen. Danny Burgess, R - Zephyrhills, whose three children are homeschooled, and Ron Matus, research and special projects director at Step Up For Students, a nonprofit organization that manages the state’s K-12 ed choice scholarship programs.
William Mattox, senior director of the James Madison Institute’s J. Stanley Marshall Center for Education Freedom, moderated the event, also sponsored by the Foundation for Florida’s Future (founded by Bush over 30 years ago) and Step Up For Students, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program. To see the full panel discussion, click here.
Bush recalled the early days of the ed choice movement, when he visited 250 schools during his campaign for governor and later established the state’s A-F grading system and a concurrent scholarship program for children in F-rated public schools. On the day Bush signed the bill, the Florida teachers union filed a lawsuit. (The state Supreme Court eventually struck down Bush’s scholarship program as violating the state Constitution's uniformity clause.)
The state also established the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship to ensure low-income students have access to options. That program ushered in an era of expanded choice that converted all scholarships to education savings accounts with universal eligibility. The change now empowers parents to customize their children’s education through a host of options, including private schools, microschools, homeschool hybrids, individual providers, online classes, and even individual public school courses. The long history of ed choice has made Florida the topic of many research studies with powerful results that show the programs are working and inform other states considering similar programs.
He said key findings include greater civic engagement, higher college attendance rates, academic gains, and improved outcomes for traditional public schools when parents have alternatives.
“Most importantly, Florida demonstrated that a child's ZIP code should not determine his or her future,” he said.
Matus, who was the statewide education reporter for the Tampa Bay Times as the movement took hold in 2004, covered the rise of charter schools, private school choice programs, Florida Virtual School (the nation’s first internet-based high school), and new forms of public school innovation.
However, meeting Black pastors in South St. Petersburg who strongly supported school choice particularly influenced his perception and challenged stereotypes about the movement.
“They simply wanted better options for the families they served,” Matus said. “That experience taught me that people support school choice for many reasons that often have little to do with the political narratives surrounding it.”
As the chief storyteller at Step Up, Matus has traveled the state to find evidence of how the rapid growth of learning options has allowed students and providers to flourish, including in Florida’s most rural areas.
“What I've seen is remarkable,” he said. “Today, roughly half of Florida's students participate in some form of educational choice. More than 500,000 students use scholarship programs. Hundreds of former public-school teachers have gone on to create their own educational options. Who could have imagined that 20 years ago?”
As for Burgess, he was a student sitting in class at Zephyrhills High School when the FTC was established 25 years ago and had organized a local Students for Jeb chapter when Bush was running for governor.
“I remain proud of my public school background,” he said. “But the educational landscape back then was very different.”
Choice was limited mainly to religious schools for those who could afford tuition. Homeschoolers were viewed as a fringe group.
Today, that has changed dramatically, he said.
Burgess and his wife use scholarship programs to customize the education of their three children through a rigorous hybrid classical Catholic program, piano lessons, and other enrichment activities.
“Watching our children thrive in that environment has been one of the greatest blessings of our lives,” he said. “The flexibility and opportunity we've been given through school-choice programs have made a tremendous difference for our family.”
Being a state lawmaker has given Burgess a front row seat to the evolution of ed choice.
As a House member in 2014, he saw changes that were largely incremental.
That changed in 2023, when lawmakers passed House Bill 1.
“When Florida embraced universal school choice, it represented the culmination of decades of work,” he said. “None of that would have happened without the foundation laid by Gov. Bush, the Tax Credit Scholarship Program, and the reforms that followed over the years.
“Today, Florida is leading the nation on universal school choice, and many other states are looking to follow that model.”
Universal came, but not without some important lessons that those in other states need to understand. Bush cited several:
“The tendency in government is always to solve problems by adding more rules,” he said. “You end up putting a blanket over the 99% of schools and providers that are working well because of problems caused by the other 1%.”
“Institutions that feel threatened by change will fight against it,” he said. “Policymakers pursuing these reforms need to understand that litigation is almost inevitable. If you're starting down this road in another state, you're going to get sued. I can virtually guarantee it.”
The panelists praised education savings accounts, which let parents direct funding to pre-approved uses spelled out in state purchasing guides, for empowering parents, who know what options best fit their children.
However, Burgess said some rules should be re-examined while leaving in place “reasonable safeguards.”
"Do we truly trust parents to make the right decisions for their children? I do. And I’m going to default to trusting parents every time.”
The conversation also turned toward equitable funding levels for different scholarship programs, the recommended removal of regulatory barriers that prevent innovation options such as microschools from opening and the need for school districts to see the benefits of sharing their underused school buildings with charter and private schools and allowing choice students to take individual district courses.
Bush challenged the assumption that if parents choose something other than a traditional public school, that public education suffers.
“We need a superintendent...that wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Every kid that is in my district...every child is my responsibility. I want to create an environment where parents have an abundance of choices, that kids are protected, that they dream big dreams, and when a school is successful as a microschool or homeschool option, or a hybrid option...or a traditional school or charter school or a Catholic school or a Jewish school, that I’m here to celebrate that success.’"
Join The James Madison Institute, Step Up For Students, and Foundation for Florida's Future for a special celebration marking the 25th anniversary of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship.
For a quarter century, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship has helped transform education in the Sunshine State and paved the way for Florida to become a national leader in educational freedom. What began as a bold effort to give more families access to educational opportunities has helped build a movement that empowers parents and expands opportunity for students across the state.
As we celebrate this monumental milestone and reflect on how far Florida has come, we must also recognize that these hard-won freedoms cannot be taken for granted. The policies and opportunities that have empowered generations of Florida families must continue to be defended against efforts to weaken, restrict, or roll back school choice.
Join us via Zoom as we celebrate 25 years of progress, honor the leaders who helped make it possible, and look ahead to the work still required to ensure that every Florida family continues to have the freedom to choose the educational path that works best for their child.
When: 11 a.m. to noon, Tuesday, Sept. 15
To register: Go here.
As families head back to school this month, this episode centers on how school choice can change daily life for children who need the right fit, especially kids with unique abilities and adoption-related trauma. A teacher and “multiple choice” mom, Aaliyah Gonzalez shares how scholarships helped her move each child into environments where they felt safe, supported, and understood. Aaliyah also shares her perspective as both a teacher and a parent, explaining why smaller settings, family-style school culture, and responsive staff can matter more than curriculum alone.
Episode details:
To learn more about the Federal Education Freedom Tax Credit, visit Step Up Step Further Scholarship Fund.
ORLANDO, Fla. — The name of a panel discussion at the State Policy Network’s 34th annual meeting was designed to get attention. But the most intriguing thing on the slide deck was the asterisk beside the huge letters that promised to reveal “Where the Wild Schools Are.”
“There is an asterisk on ‘schools’ for a reason: Virtually all of the programs you will hear about today are not technically schools,” said William Mattox, senior director of the J. Stanley Marshall Center for Education Freedom at the James Madison Institute in Tallahassee. “That is one reason we believe education choice, not just school choice, is so important. ESAs and other flexible scholarship tools make many of these options possible. Many of these programs simply would not exist without flexible scholarship funding.”
Mattox introduced two providers, one who founded a homeschool hybrid that operates near downtown Tampa, the other for a private school set on a 10-acre farm in Lakeland.
The third panelist, Ron Matus, director of research and special projects at Step Up For Students, also shared stories of programs across the state that he has written about since Florida lawmakers converted all scholarship programs to education savings accounts in 2023. Those include a Panhandle ranch school near the Alabama line, where students dehorn cattle and administer blood tests alongside classes in reading, math, science and social studies, as well as a South Florida couple who teach science with surfing and skateboarding.
“Much of the rest of the country is still trying to understand school choice. In Florida, we are moving from school choice to education choice in a big way,” Matus said.
For example, more than half of Florida students are now in something other than their zoned neighborhood schools. Of those, about 150,000 students are doing “a la carte learning,” receiving state support through scholarships that allow parents to mix and match education options outside of full-time schools, he said.
The point of the discussion was to share the experience of Florida with a national audience of policy researchers to show what is possible when states adopt education choice policies that give families maximum flexibility.
Tiffany Thenor shared her story of how she left her public school teaching job because she wanted the freedom to help students keep their sense of imagination and creativity as they learned core academics. In 2016, she and a friend opened a microschool in Lakeland they named WonderHere.
“The idea is that wonder should not be confined or restricted to the classroom,” said Thenor, whose program won a Yass Prize grant last year. “We created WonderHere as a proof point that we do not have to suffocate joy, wonder, and curiosity out of children in order to get strong academic outcomes.”
The main campus sits on a farm and serves 140 students. Students start the day with chores and gardening, then move into traditional academics taught in a non-traditional format. They spend at least two hours a day outside in nature and play.
Most of the students receive state education choice scholarships, so they complete required testing at the end of the year. WonderHere has been so successful that it has now expanded to locations in other parts of Florida and in South Carolina.
The county school district where the initial campus is located recently started a pilot project to offer the WonderHere model in the same public school where Thenor formerly taught.
Marissa Hess described her homeschool hybrid model, which also emphasizes learning through play. But unlike WonderHere, which is located near a small city, her Urban Cottage Educational Collaborative is only two miles north of bustling downtown Tampa in a federal opportunity zone.
“That might not seem ideal for a traditional outdoor program, but that was exactly the point,” said Hess, who was homeschooled and taught in U.S. public, private and Montessori schools. While living abroad before moving back to Tampa, she observed forest schools in northern Europe.
She said today’s children go to urbanized playgrounds that have rubberized mulch, shallow slides and no teeter-totters, no opportunities for risk, climbing or physical development.
At the same time, she heard many parents talking about their children’s occupational therapy and sensory processing challenges.
She wondered if children had enough opportunities to build core strength, ride bikes, climb, dig, and move their bodies in natural ways.
In 2015, she created Urban Cottage as a part-time program to help meet those needs. The forest playschool program uses a garden on a main thoroughfare. Hess worked with an occupational therapist and a speech pathologist to create a two-year curriculum focused on language, vocabulary, fine and gross motor development, speech and vocabulary.
In the playschool program, children grow food, compost, and learn through nature and play. There is a constant waitlist.
“Millennials are very aware of outdoor education and want it for their children because they remember part of their own childhood being analog. They want to bring back traditional childhood experiences: playing in dirt, digging holes, building strength, and learning how to grow food.”
Urban Cottage also offers instruction in core subjects, after-school tutoring and summer camps. It employs experienced educators and subject-matter experts, including professionals in science, physics, literature, and research. Classes are small and ability-based, with students often working closely with experts in one-on-one or small group settings. She intentionally caps enrollment to preserve nimbleness, allowing the program to adapt quickly to student and family needs. She also described Urban Cottage as a positive environment for teachers, giving educators freedom to teach in meaningful ways.
Hess is now working on partnerships with art studios, therapy services and other a la carte providers located near Urban Cottage to create an eco-system that offers families access to multiple services in one area.
Matus pointed out that private providers aren’t the only ones benefiting from the new era of education freedom. Public schools can participate in the new marketplace rather than stand apart from it. Florida has not mandated that school districts offer a la carte courses, but 55 of 67 districts have signed up to do so with Step Up For Students. Districts can market underused classes, such as advanced courses or specialized labs, to scholarship and homeschool families while generating revenue.
The key takeaways were that education choice is no longer about letting families choose from among existing traditional schools but about making room for new kinds of learning. In Florida, that means programs being built around beaches, barns, gardens, buses, shared public school buildings, and neighborhoods.
For families, the promise is customization. For educators, it is the chance to build around their strengths. For policymakers, it is a reminder that flexible funding and flexible rules can expand supply in ways no single system could plan from the top down.
As Mattox said, Florida’s wildest “schools” may not be schools at all. But they may point to where the future of education choice is headed as other states follow Florida’s lead.
Editor’s note: Harvard University Program on Education Policy and Governance devoted its annual spring research conference to helping policymakers assess education choice: What is and is not working, the trade-offs involved in different programs, and the long-term effects. John F. Kirtley, the founder and chairman of Step Up For Students, the nation’s largest nonprofit scholarship funding organization, told attendees in a keynote address about his home state of Florida, where 30 years of robust education choice across the district, charter, and private sectors are not only working but have set a national standard for the other states taking their first steps on the journey. His remarks are summarized below. You can read the entire speech here. To learn more about Harvard’s Emerging School Models conference, scheduled for Sept. 17 and 18, go here.
Redefinition of public education
Growth of choice programs
Supply-side developments
Impact on rural and district schools
Educational outcomes and research
ORLANDO, Fla. — As public education has evolved from a one-size-fits-all system to one where families are empowered to choose the environment that best fits their child, everyone has been a winner: Students, parents, educators, entrepreneurs, and even public school districts.
That was the message of John F. Kirtley, founder and chairman of Step Up For Students, to the roughly 1,000 people who attended the non-profit’s Navigating New Horizons conference this week.
In a closing speech that at the end brought the audience to its feet, Kirtley began by describing the state of education before the 1990s. Everyone paid taxes, and students were assigned to schools by their ZIP codes.
“It was, it could be said, a definition that emphasized ‘uniformity,’” he said, referencing but not naming the state teachers union’s recent lawsuit to eliminate Florida’s robust education choice programs, including all scholarship programs and charter schools.
Kirtley said he didn’t realize it at the time, but since overall graduation rates in Florida were, until the mid-1990’s, around 60% overall and less than 40% for black males, it’s likely that many of his friends on the football team who crossed the stage did not get real diplomas. They likely received certificates of completion. The second group probably included a classmate who regularly got in trouble for dozing during early morning courses and was uninspired by classic literature. Yet he could take apart an entire car and rebuild it by himself, when Kirtley couldn’t change his car’s oil.
“But there was no specialized program for him…No, uniformity didn’t serve him well.”
Today, Kirtley said, his classmate could sleep in, take core classes online in his pajamas, then head over to the district automotive technology program in the afternoon, where he would be the star student.
“When he graduated, he’d be hired by the local Mercedes dealer and make over $100,000 two years out of school,” Kirtley said. “So, yeah, he’d be better off.”
Not only are students better off, but so are educators who can start their own schools, including microschools, and even school districts, including many that now offer specialized magnet schools and individual courses to education choice scholarship students who attend school part time.
“I close by saying don’t fear the New Definition. Embrace it. Thrive in it. You can thrive in it whether you are a microschool, an à la carte provider, or one of nation’s largest school districts,” he said. “And when you thrive in the New Definition, all students will thrive along with you. And shouldn’t that really be the ultimate goal?”
His remarks echoed the message given the day before by Gretchen Schoenhaar, Step Up’s chief executive officer, who gave the conference’s opening speech.
“Families today seek learning environments that reflect their children's unique strengths, needs and goals,” Schoenhaar said. “What's really inspiring is how this demand has sparked innovation across the education landscape.”
Schoenhaar said she hoped the two-day event would offer attendees a chance to be “inspired by the conversations you have, encouraged by the stories you hear, and energized by the collective passion in this room.”
Schoenhaar said Florida is home to the nation's largest parent-directed education marketplace today, with more than half of all K-12 students participating in some form of education choice, including many district schools, private schools, charter schools, homeschools, online schooling, or some combination of those.
“The spirit of innovation and possibility is exactly what this conference is all about,” she said.
The event, whose theme is Facing the Future Together, featured nearly 100 session speakers and 100 exhibitors displaying everything from a la carte learning to transportation options, tutoring, and curriculum.
Organizers said this year’s goal was to provide educators with information and resources based on best practices that also reflect the bigger picture. That included information about the rise of microschools and how to use AI efficiently and responsibly.
“Over the next two days, we hope you'll be inspired by new ideas, meaningful connections and innovative strategies that will help shape the future of education,” Paula Nelson, Step Up’s vice president of school and provider services, told the audience during her welcome.
Breakout session topics included school safety, a la carte education, navigating AI, the future of public education, the benefits of applying for the Yass Prize, how public schools are offering individual courses to scholarship students and how to create and sustain microschools. Four sessions on the upcoming federal Education Freedom Tax Credit program drew standing-room-only crowds.
The federal program, which launches in January 2027, allows individual donors to divert up to $1,700 of federal tax liability to support scholarships for students in public and private schools. The federal government is expected to announce rules that cover program specifics soon. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is among the governors who have opted their states into the program.
At the end of the conference, Schoenhaar broke some news: The conference will return June 14 and 15 of 2027.
Students at the University of Austin are getting an overview of the nation’s rapidly expanding education choice movement, including its storied history in Florida.
The survey course includes guest lectures delivered by top national researchers and thought leaders, including Ron Matus, director of research and special projects at Step Up For Students. The nonprofit organization is Florida’s and the nation’s largest education choice scholarship funding organization. Matus, who spent 25 years as a journalist and eight years as the state education reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, has authored many white papers on education innovation in Florida for Step Up.
The topic of Matus’s lecture was “Freedom, Pluralism and School Choice: Competing Rationales and Contemporary Practice” and included a special emphasis on education innovation in the Sunshine State.
Matus shared the evolution of public education in Florida from its first model of neighborhood zoned district schools to the rise of charter schools, homeschooling, private school scholarships, educational savings accounts, a la carte learning, and even public schools now offering individual courses paid for with education savings accounts. He also described the many learning options now available, from traditional private schools to farm and forest schools to microschools and programs customized by families.
Matus also recommended reading that exposed students to various arguments in favor of education choice, including economist Milton Friedman’s 1955 groundbreaking essay “The Role of Government in Education,” which emphasized free markets and competition, and John E. Coons, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, who focused on dignity and fairness to all families regardless of income.
Erin Davis Valdez, executive director of the university’s Center for Education and Public Service, developed the course, which followed two K-12 practicums with rotations that began in the fall of 2025 at participating private and charter schools.
She describes the program as being in “the incubator phase,” and hopes to expand it into an academic minor.
“What we’re trying to do every term is offer a course for students interested in education policy as a career or in teaching as a career or something adjacent to it, like entrepreneurship,” she said. “But for now, students can take these as elective classes, and it builds their interest in the field.”
Valdez, who was homeschooled as a young child in Lakeland, Florida, a year before it became legal, said she chose the guest lecturers by looking for the best researchers and thought leaders in the movement. In addition to Matus, the list includes Eric Wearne, an associate professor in the Education Economics Center at Kennesaw State University and director of the Hybrid Schools Project. Wearne, who once described most traditional teacher prep programs as “thinly veiled arms of the HR department of the school district,” spoke on “Design Policy for New School Models.”
Others included Patrick Wolf, Distinguished Professor and 21st Century Chair in School Choice at the University of Arkansas, who spoke about the history of school choice policy, Jay P. Greene, senior fellow at the Defense of Freedom Institute, who spoke on the national responsibility of American universities; Katherine Bathgate, CEO and founder of SchoolForward, who spoke about economic foundations and emerging policy issues I education freedom; Mary K Wells, managing partner at Bellwether, who spoke on the last 30 years of education reform efforts; and Anita Scott, director of public policy for the Texas Home School Coalition, who spoke on connecting policy and practice in the homeschooling community.
Matthew Ladner, a senior adviser for education policy implementation at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy and former executive editor of the NextSteps blog, is scheduled to lecture on June 1 about new directions in education choice and the question of accountability. The class will conclude June 8 with a lecture by Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, whose topic is “The Last Days of Public School.”
Less than two months after the application season began, record-breaking interest continues with more than 500,000 students applying for Florida’s K-12 education choice scholarships.
Step Up For Students, the nonprofit organization that administers 98% of the state’s scholarships, opened applications for the 2026-27 school year on Feb. 1. A record 200,000 applied during the first three days.
By midday Feb. 10, a total of 300,106 students had applied for scholarships, which represents an 11.7% increase over the same 10-day period last year. By Friday morning, Feb. 27, a total of 401,507 students had applied.
Applications reached the 500,000 mark on March 30, which was 22 days earlier than in 2025.
Step Up For Students CEO Gretchen Schoenhaar said last week that the organization’s team and systems were ready for the surge of interest. Step Up’s technology systems processed 15% more applications on the first day this year than at the same time last year. Of the families who called for assistance, more than 90% reported being “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the support they received.
“Florida continues to set the pace for the nation in education choice,” Schoenhaar said. “Families have become accustomed to seeking options in their children’s education and Step Up For Students is proud to support them every step of the way.”
Since its inception in 2002, Step Up has administered more than 3 million scholarships.
During the 25-26 school year, more than 525,000 students have been funded on Florida’s K-12 scholarship programs to access learning options of their choice. If these students were counted as a single school district, it would be the largest in the state and the third largest in the country. That makes Florida the national leader in education options.
However, not all families end up using their scholarships. Top reasons include: Their preferred private school lacked capacity; they were on a waitlist for a charter school and were accepted; they chose to attend a district school, etc.
Step Up is on track this school year to have 2.75 million transactions on MyScholarShop, its online marketplace, for over $425 million. Step Up is on track to process over 4.5 million reimbursement requests this year, worth over $595 million, four times what it had just two years ago.
Current scholarship families have until April 30 to renew their scholarships for the next school year. All families who want a PEP scholarship must also apply by April 30.
Applications and more details are available here.
We will continue to update the numbers in this post until applications close.
