Florida’s K–12 education landscape continues to shift toward choice. During the 2024–25 school year, 53% of all 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.

“Each year, Florida families have made it clear that they want more options for their children’s education,” said Gretchen Schoenhaar, CEO of Step Up For Students, the Florida non-profit that administers the state’s education choice scholarship programs.

“Increasingly, parents and guardians are willing to mix and match private and public resources to choose the ones that work best for their family.”

Since the 2008–09 school year, Step Up For Students, in collaboration with the Florida Department of Education, has tracked enrollment across a variety of choice programs. The 2023–24 school year represented a historic milestone: the first time more than half of all K–12 students in the state attended a school of choice. The 2024–25 school year continued that upward trend.

The Changing Landscapes report draws from Florida Department of Education data and removes, where possible, duplicate counts to provide a clearer picture of school choice participation. For example, it adjusts for home education students supported by the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities (FES-UA) and eliminates double-counted students in career and professional programs. It also excludes prekindergarten students in FES-UA and programs such as Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK), as the report focuses solely on K–12 education.

While many families still choose their neighborhood public schools, Florida’s education system now offers a broad range of options to meet diverse student needs. As in past years, public school choice remains dominant, occupying four of the top five spots in overall enrollment. Charter schools are the most popular single option, followed by district open enrollment programs, the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options (FES-EO), career and professional academies, and Advanced International Certificate of Education (AICE) programs for upperclassmen.

The largest increases in enrollment occurred in the FES-EO program, which has merged with the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program, and the Personalized Education Program (PEP), a scholarship that helps fund education at home.

Among public school options, AICE enrollment grew nearly 17%, career and professional academies grew 6.2%, and open enrollment grew 4.6%. While overall district enrollment appeared to decline slightly, these public school choice options still grew more than charter schools (independent public schools), which grew just 2.3%. This may suggest that school districts could benefit from expanding their own menu of diverse school options to better retain families.

Choice remains strong within Florida’s public school system. More than 1.2 million of the state’s 2.9 million public school students attended a school of choice, while another 688,000 students outside the public system enrolled in private schools or home education programs.

A newer option to keep an eye on is district schools offering classes and services to students on an education choice scholarship, paid for with their scholarship funds. Currently 37 of Florida’s 67 districts have been approved as providers with Step Up For Students, and another 11 are in the process of being approved. These arrangements further blur the line between public and private and emphasize that the focus remains on the individual needs of students.

With so many options available, Florida’s education system has entered a new phase. Choice is no longer an alternative; it is the norm. Families routinely evaluate multiple pathways, and whether they select a different option or remain in their assigned public school, they are making an active choice. The result is an education landscape in which public, private, and home education options coexist and evolve together, reflecting the reality that students and families have different needs, and that those differences matter.

A Tampa Bay area morning TV show kicked off National School Choice Week by highlighting a family who benefits from a state K-12 scholarship. 

Arielle Frett appeared on Fox 13’s “Good Day Tampa Bay” program on Monday with her son, AnyJah, a ninth grader at The Way Christian Academy in Tampa. She said she moved to Florida from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, in 2017 to find better educational opportunities for AnyJah, who has severe autism. 

“No teachers were able to work with him on his level,” Frett told Fox 13 reporter Heather Healy. “Most of his learning in English and math are on fifth and sixth grade levels now.” 

 A U.S. military veteran and single mother of two, Frett said she would not have been able to afford a private school for her son without the scholarship.  

She said AnyJah, who receives the Family Empowerment Scholarship for students with Unique Abilities, is “loved, protected, and thriving” at his school, where class sizes of 10 to 12 students allow for more individual attention. He can also receive his therapies during school. 

The segment also featured information about Florida’s robust education choice options. Those include traditional public schools, district magnet schools, charter schools, private schools, microschools, homeschools, virtual schools, and customized education programs that allow parents to mix and match.  

“We’ve gone from education and funding through the system to now empowering families by putting the money in their hands and allowing them to make the most appropriate educational decisions for families,” said Keith Jacobs, director of provider development at Step Up For Students, which administers most of the state’s education choice scholarships.  

Jacobs has spent the past year working with school districts to provide individual courses to scholarship families whose students do not attend public or private school full time, paid for with scholarship funds. About 70% of Florida school districts are participating.  

The scholarship application season for the 2026-27 school year begins Feb. 1. Visit Step Up For Students to learn more and apply.  

Choice opponents have been known to throw contradictory arguments out against private choice programs. One moment they will claim that the majority of kids using universal choice programs were already going to private schools. A few moments later they will claim such programs are draining district schools of students and money. The irony of these mutually exclusive claims will often escape the person making them, and you can see hints of both in this New York Times podcast titled Why So Many Parents are Opting Out of Public Schools.

Sigh

Choice opponents make all kinds of claims, but not many can withstand even a modicum of scrutiny. Let’s take for instance a widely repeated fable- that Arizona’s universal ESA program has “busted” the state budget.

If you actually examine state reports like this one for district and charter funding and also this one for ESA funding, you wind up with:

Arizona districts have exclusive access to local funding among other things and are by far the most generously funded K-12 system in the state. Districts, charters and ESAs all use the state’s weighted student funding formula, and ESAs get the lowest average funding despite having a higher percentage of students with disabilities participating than either the district or charter sector.

If you track the percentage of students served by the district, charter and ESA sectors respectively, and the funding used by each as a percentage of the total, you get:

So, there you have it; supposedly the sector educating 6% of Arizona students for 4% of the total K-12 funding is “bankrupting” the state of Arizona. Meanwhile the system, which generated an average of $321,700 for a classroom of 20 ($16,085*20), is “underfunded.”

A group of 20 ESA students receiving the average scholarship amount receive $123,780 less funding, but they are (somehow) “busting the budget.” The fact that a growing number of Arizona students opt for a below $10k ESA rather than an above $16k district education tells us something about how poorly districts utilize their resources. So does the NAEP.

There is a school sector weighing heavily upon Arizona taxpayers, but it is not the ESA program.

 

**SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 8**

Western cultures, for some strange reason, involve rituals where we pretend that various “fairy creatures” exist, particularly with children: the Tooth Fairy, a jolly old elf with flying reindeer who brought me an awesome Big Wheel in 1973, egg and goody hiding rabbits, etc. When I became a parent, I played along with these rituals, but then at some point questioned why I was doing it. On the one hand, I didn’t want my children to be those killjoy types who went around bursting the bubbles of other kids. On the other hand, I did not want to train my children not to trust me. I decided to allow the “fun” to go on until they each reached a certain age, then to explain to them that these things are traditions and that it would be best to allow their friends to figure it out on their own.

So, dear reader, I assume that you have reached a certain age and that you are prepared to know the truth about the last fairy creature. Belief in this one tends to persist much longer than the others and is alas, more detrimental. Sorry to be a killjoy, but here goes:

Philosopher kings are not real.

This was my main thought upon reading Mike McShane’s recent entry in a debate about school choice regulation. Go read it. I’ll wait here.

Go on…

Okay, good. My favorite part involved the Gilded Age meat baron, but McShane made several crucial points. Local school boards, state governments and the federal government all regulate public schools in a very active fashion. I could produce multiple graphs from NAEP, PISA, etc., showing what a pig’s breakfast American academic achievement has become, but you have already seen them, so I will spare you. Why are American schools so wretched despite so much regulation? Oh well, that is simple: regulation is not made by philosopher-kings but rather by politics. Politics has an amazingly consistent record of fouling things up.

The philosopher-king fairies, invented by Plato, are a specially trained and educated aesthetic elite who, disinterested in fame or wealth, love only wisdom and justice. Having thus earned the right to rule over us lesser mortals, we proles should feel deferential and deeply grateful for their sacrifice. Again, sorry to burst your bubble, but these people do not exist in the real world. Out here in the real world, mere humans with all kinds of motivations (political and otherwise), limits to their knowledge, greed, stupidity and other normal human failings create regulations. Those of us fortunate enough to live in a democracy get the chance to throw the bums out when we’ve had enough. Just in case you haven’t noticed, a major subtext of politics these days involves bums that voters can’t throw out.

Politics, not philosopher-kings, runs regulation, and politics runs on self-interest far more than on benevolent technocratic wisdom. Choice programs must cope with powerful organized interests that yearn to use regulation as a tool to domesticate choice opportunities and find it in their self-interest to do so. The default position of choice supporters should therefore be to view the calls for regulation with a deep skepticism; it is not paranoia when people really are out to get you.

None of this is to say that it is possible to pass choice legislation without regulation; it is not. I am not aware of any program anywhere that operates without some degree of regulation. American parents, however, want a radically different K-12 system than the one government forces them to pay for (see above). The way forward is to allow families to partner with educators to sort through new schools and education methods. Heavily regulated choice systems might get to something close to the K-12 system parents want and deserve before the heat-death of the universe, but then again, they might not.

America’s founders fought a grueling war against the most powerful country in the world based upon what was then a radical idea, that people could live better without royalty to boss them around. The divine right of kings was another myth humanity needed to grow up and discard, and that should include philosopher-kings.

 

 

Seppie Furlano gets dirty at school. It happens. He’s 8, he’s a boy, and one day a week, his classroom is a mixture of trees, shrubs, dirt, and mud.

And there’s a creek.

Seppie and his classmates, who include his 10-year-old sister, Luciana, climb trees, discover tadpoles, and build small boats out of twigs and leaves to float down the creek.

Luciana’s mom reports that her daughter doesn’t get quite as dirty as her brother, but she has just as much fun. Together, they explore and learn about the great outdoors and all it has to offer at Curious and Kind, a nature-based, hybrid school located near their Sarasota home.

 

The school, started two years ago by Justine Wilson and her husband, Chris Trammel, is now part of the hybrid learning, homeschool experience that Kristina and Dominic Furlano designed for their children with the help of education choice scholarships managed by Step Up For Students.

“I absolutely love the scholarship,” Kristina said. “The scholarship has made our homeschooling journey what it is today. My kids are absolutely thriving.”

Actually, Kristina balks a little at the word homeschooling, because Luciana and Seppie learn both inside and outside the home.

“I feel like that is the complete opposite of homeschooling,” she said.

The scholarships are education savings accounts (ESA) that allow the Furlano’s flexibility to tailor the homeschool curriculum toward each child’s needs and interests. They have joined the growing number of parents in Florida who are taking the hybrid route, finding educational environments outside the home to give their children something they can’t experience inside the home.

Parents are supplementing in-home learning by sending their children to educational environments that specialize in such activities as music, fashion, cooking, robotics, athletics, and nature. Call it “à la carte learning.”

Curious and Kind offers four different programs for different age groups, from “walking ages” to teenagers. Depending on the program, families can enroll what the school calls their “explorers” one, two, or three days a week. (Read more about the school here.)

“We are part of a homeschool family's menu that they designed specifically for their child,” Justine Wilson said.

Luciana takes sewing and musical theater classes, while Seppie attends a local STEM program that offers classes in Lego robotics. On Tuesdays, the two can be found at a local skate park with other homeschooled children. Some parents use skateboarding as a physical education requirement. Afternoons are often blocked out for reading tutors.

This summer, the two will participate in several camps, more outdoor fun at Curious and Kind, and a baking camp. If all goes well, baking camp will turn into baking classes during the 2025-26 school year. Kristina has already expanded her children’s outdoor learning for next year by enrolling them at Curious and Kind for two days a week.

“I like my kids to be out of the house, but only for a couple of days a week. I don't want them gone five days a week,” Kristina said. “If they are gone two or three times out of the week, it gives them some structure, and they get to make friends, and I get to do what I need to do while they're gone.”

Luciana originally attended a local private school. She is dyslexic, though, and that hindered her learning. She had to repeat the first grade. She also suffered from anxiety at school. So, Kristina and Dominic decided homeschooling was the best option.

Because she is dyslexic, Luciana qualified for the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities.

Because Seppie is homeschooled, he qualified for the Personalized Education Program (PEP) scholarship.

The flexibility of homeschooling allows Kristina to schedule online reading tutors for the afternoon, when she feels Luciana and Seppie are more receptive to video lessons. It works.

“My daughter read her very first book two weeks ago, so that was amazing,” Kristina said. “We were all so worried about this child, and then she read this book. She’s on her sixth book now. I mean, they're all the very beginner books, but she's got it, and she's putting it together, and it's just been really helpful to have the tutor.”

The ESAs pay for homeschool curriculum, reading tutors, a ton of art and sewing supplies, sewing and outdoor classes, musical theater, and summer camps.

Luciana has learned to sew by taking classes from a mother who also homeschools her children.

“Luciana is using a real sewing machine. She designs. She cuts the fabric out, picks her fabric, picks her string, and sews the entire thing,” Kristina said.

Luciana has made pajama pants, a skirt, a hat, bags, and sleeping masks.

“They do fashion shows,” Kristina said. “She has a little portfolio.”

Because of Luciana’s dyslexia, Kristina said a brick-and-mortar school will never be a good fit for her daughter. She has no intention of sending Seppie to one, either.

“The beauty of homeschooling is to not make your child have this cookie-cutter education that society wants your children to have,” Kristina said. “Now we have this generation of home-schooled children who are going to take over the world with their creativity. They're not going to work 9-to-5. They’re going to be entrepreneurs.”

 

 

 

EdChoice has an interesting survey question comparing what sort of school parents would prefer (district, charter, private or home) and comparing the results to actual enrollment patterns. In 2024 it looked like this:

There is a lot happening in that chart, starting with the apparent desire of approximately 50% of the parents of district students to have their students somewhere else. Of course, a great many legal and practical constraints stand between preference and reality, which is why we have an education freedom movement and why we find so much opposition from the insecure K-12 reactionary community. Taking the surveyed demand as a part of a thought experiment around “what would it take to give families what they want?” can be illuminating. Of course, in the real world, these things change only gradually. Arizona has the highest percentage of students in charter schools at 21% or so, but it took three decades to get there for all kinds of reasons, including the need to have school space, which involved a great deal of construction and debt. We live in a world of charter and private school scarcity relative to demand, and keeping up the previous (inadequate) pace of construction may prove difficult.

Using my advanced skills acquired in the Texas public school system between 1972 and 1986, I have used this surveyed demand to calculate an implied demand for an additional 1.1 million charter school spaces. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them. It took almost three and a half decades to reach 3.7 million, and if you’ll now take a look at the first chart above, you’ll see that most of that three-and-a-half-decade period involved relatively low and almost continually declining long term interest rates between 1991 and 2021.

After 2021, both interest and building costs went up for charter school construction. Interest rates of course could go down, but they could also (gulp) go further up. A slowdown in the rate of new charter openings happened before the increase in interest and construction costs:

The little green force mystic taught us “always uncertain the future is,” but it appears to me that circumstances will require the rise of different school models that create seats sans debt. The old expression holds that God doesn’t close a door without opening a window, and the recent rise in interest rates happened almost simultaneously with the rise of pandemic pods and a la carte learning.

 

At the annual Florida School Choice Conference and School Choice Summit, attendees got their customary sendoff from Jim Horne, a former state senator, state education commissioner and pioneer of the state’s charter school movement.  

“We were charged to be laboratories of innovation,” he told the audience of school leaders in his keynote speech. “I challenge you to step out of the proverbial box. If you don’t innovate, you will stagnate.” 

So far, charter schools have resisted the forces of stagnation. A report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools shows charter schools added 83,000 new students during the 2023-24 school year, as enrollment in other public schools shrank. 

This school year, they added thousands more students in Florida. Recent figures from the state Department of Education show statewide charter school enrollment topped 400,000 during the 2024-25 school year. 

That growth comes two years after state lawmakers passed House Bill 1, which allowed universal education choice scholarship eligibility and created the Personalized Education Program, a flexible scholarship for parents who fully customize their children’s education. 

The legislation unlocked new opportunities for charters to heed Horne’s call to serve as laboratories of innovation by providing a la carte classes and services to scholarship students who did not attend public or private school full time. Need AP chemistry or calculus?  No problem.  

So far, five charter school organizations have partnered with Step Up For Students to offer individual courses to scholarship families, with more in the works. 

“I think it’s a great idea and something that fits right into the charter school realm,” said Karen Seder, director of educational standards at Kid’s Community College, which operates three schools, including one that includes middle school, in Riverview, a southeastern suburb of Tampa. 

The schools expect to begin offering courses soon after leaders decide what might work best. Seder said it might be easier to offer electives first and add core academics after seeing how things work out.  

Though she sees the ability to help part-time students as a win for everyone, she sees the need to protect charter schools’ uniqueness, which comes from their ability to offer strong organizational cultures and coherent, specialized programs, for example, STEM, music or programs for students with learning differences. However, she called the push to maximize options for as many students as possible “the right mindset” for society. 

“Ultimately, when you and I are no longer working and need somebody to take care of us, all these kids are going to be the ones responsible, so it shouldn’t matter to us if they’re homeschool or private school or public school or charter school or wilderness school, she said. “We need to make sure we’re raising kids that have the best education that we can, and our public dollars should be going to all of our kids.” 

For we who grew up tall and proud
In the shadow of the mushroom cloud
Convinced our voices can't be heard
We just want to scream it louder and louder and louder

— Queen, Hammer to Fall

Recently we reviewed in these pages' election returns by generation showing that Vice President Kamala Harris won a majority of most generations but decisively lost Gen X, and thus the election as a whole. We Gen Xers shrugged off the daily looming prospect of global thermonuclear annihilation. Latchkey kids had more pressing things to concern themselves with. Worse still, we survived the cultural oppression of the Baby Boomers and their allegedly “classic” rock playing the same seven songs on infinite radio repeat. Punk, funk, new wave, alternative, grunge — please just give us something else to listen to!

But I digress; in addition to our shared childhood experiences, many in Gen X were the parents of school-aged children during the COVID-19 dumpster fire. This made many see red far more than even having to listen to Stairway to Heaven 18,589 times. K-12 traditionalists/reactionaries might hope to wait out the Gen X generation — some of us have become grandparents — we can’t live forever. Delightfully, still greater challenges for the status-quo tribe loom in the immediate future.

Polls, like the one above from Ed Choice, show that both Millennials and Gen Z show higher support for school choice than either Gen X or Baby Boomers. This is hardly surprising. There were only three channels on television (four if you count PBS) when Gen X was young, and we were thrilled when cable television came along and provided an additional 50 or so channels. Young people these days can stream anything, anytime, anywhere. Future generations will not even understand the phrase “cutting the cord” as they won’t have ever experienced a cord to begin with.

It's hard to imagine public education remaining one-size-fits-all in a world of ubiquitous customization. Democracy can be terribly unforgiving to candidates who attempt to give voters what they think they need rather than what they want. Ultimately this points to a bipartisan future for K-12 choice.

Chuck Todd for instance noted on election night:

Both Florida and Texas have been very aggressive about expanding school choice. Where have Republicans made the greatest gains among Hispanic voters? Florida and Texas. So, education, the economy, those issues, bread and butter issues, and that is how they talk to them. I’m not saying Democrats weren’t, but the cultural issues don’t play as well with Hispanic voters as they may with college-educated whites or even African Americans.

Political parties don’t generally volunteer to play the role of the nail indefinitely; it’s better to be a hammer. Gen Xers are old enough to have seen a bipartisan coalition for choice come, and to have seen it go.  Will we see an effort to get a new bipartisan coalition rushing headlong as a new goal, or will we be waiting for the hammer to fall again?

Stay tuned.

 

 

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – Cristina Bedgood, a 15-year former public school teacher, took two years to craft plans for her own private learning center. She knew she needed 40 students in year one to make it work. But in April, when she held her first open house for Curious Innovators of America, she looked out the front door five minutes before the start time and saw … nobody.

Her heart sank.

Thankfully, it floated right back up, because in the next few minutes, 30 families appeared. “And every person who walked in the building said, ‘Oh my God, we need this! ‘ ”

The calls keep coming. Bedgood signed up 10 students on one day in August alone. Most of them use state-supported education savings accounts.

Bedgood said the response has been gratifying – and going her own way as a teacher, liberating.

“I needed to be able to break free. I felt like I was being caged,” Bedgood said, referring to traditional schools. “I knew I could do so much, but I was being limited.”

In Florida, a national leader in expanding education choice, it’s tough to keep up with the growing ranks of former public school teachers who are leveraging choice programs to create their own options.

Bedgood said she came to realize she could help more students by creating her own model – in this case, a K-8 tutoring center focused on math, reading, and enrichment that caters to a wide range of students with a wide range of schedules.

She didn’t come to this conclusion lightly.

Bedgood was the instructional coach at a high-poverty, public elementary school for six years. She found the work “exhilarating.” But she also began to have doubts about the best path forward.

Bedgood said she was effective in part because she had a principal who gave her the freedom to veer from district dictates; to “go rogue” when she thought she needed to. Bedgood said she re-ordered and re-focused some parts of the curriculum, doubled down on others, and better aligned it to state standards. She leaned into response boards for formative assessments. She made widespread use of manipulatives that previously were gathering dust.

Her approach worked. The school’s state-issued grade gradually rose from a D to an A. Math proficiency rose from 47 percent to 72 percent.

But Bedgood said she also saw that principals like hers were rare. And that not everybody had high expectations for high-poverty students.

“I knew it. I watched it. I saw kids who were Level 1’s (the lowest level on Florida’s standardized tests) shoot up to proficiency,” she said. And yet, in some places, “the climate was almost like, ‘These kids can’t do it.’ “

Bedgood asked herself: If I rose through the ranks, would I truly be in position to do what works?

Ultimately, she concluded, there was a good chance she wouldn’t be. So, she looked for the exit. She overcame fears about starting her own operation; persuaded her husband, a firefighter; consulted with experts, including other teachers; and found a good location without too much hassle.

Bedgood describes Curious Innovators as a tutoring center and microschool. She opened in April with two students: Her own kids.

The center is 4,200 square feet, in a trim office building framed by oaks and palms. The interior is colorful and comfortable, with giant, geometric puzzle pieces hanging from the ceiling, all of it designed to stimulate creativity. There are separate rooms for reading, math, and STEM, and multiple stations for students to collaborate.

Bedgood employs five instructors, three of them full time. Two are former public school teachers.

All the students are homeschooled.

Some need tutoring in reading and/or math. Some are there for enrichment. Some mix and match from both. Bedgood emphasizes project-based and inquiry-based learning, but each student’s programming is created in tandem with them and their parents.

Reading and math classes are offered three days a week. Enrichment classes include art, music, drama, debate, creative writing, STEM, and entrepreneurship.

Maria Tobon signed up her daughter and son for math, reading, and science this fall after getting to know Curious Innovators during a three-week summer program. They attend full days on Mondays and Fridays.

One of her children uses Florida’s Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities. The other uses a Personalized Education Program scholarship. Both are administered by Step Up For Students.

“The beauty of a tutoring program like Cristina has built is you can hand pick what you need,” said Tobon, a former Montessori teacher who manages a homeschool co-op.

Tobon said between all her children, she has experienced a full gamut of educational options, from traditional public schools to magnet, charter, and private schools. She decided to homeschool after one of her children was diagnosed with cancer, and the COVID-19 pandemic made traditional schooling too risky.

Homeschooling, she said, turned out to be “absolutely mind-blowing.”

“When I took control … they grew in every sense,” Tobon said. “Going back to a full-time program sounds like jail.”

Kristen Collins wanted part-time schooling for her children, too. Her husband travels a lot for work, and homeschooling allows the family to occasionally join him, without missing a beat educationally.

Bryson, 6, and Aaliyah, 8, both use PEP scholarships. They attend Curious Innovators full days on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

“It’s just a great happy medium,” Collins said. And her kids “don’t want to leave. They’re having a blast.”

In some ways, Bedgood’s approach to teaching and learning is mainstream.

She follows the “science of reading” for younger students and struggling readers. She uses standardized tests to gauge proficiency. She tends to follow the grade-level progressions laid out in state standards.

The difference is, she has the flexibility to deviate from those tools, or supplement them, in any way she and the parents see fit.

Collins said that approach is working for Aaliyah, who has struggled a bit in math.

“Cristina recognizes that students learn differently, with different modalities. It’s not one size fits all,” she said. Aaliyah “has only been there two and a half weeks, but I can see she’s getting to these higher levels.”

After experiencing what’s possible outside traditional schools, Bedgood said she couldn’t go back.

Giving parents and teachers options, she said, is the best path to progress.

“I want choice to be the primary form of education,” she said. “The change needs to come from out of the system.”

Something about the Periodic Table of Elements grabs Conrad Black’s interest. All those chemicals and their atomic numbers. He heard about it, read about it, but didn’t know anything about it.

Until this past school year.

For his fifth-grade science course, Conrad chose to learn about energy and chemistry, specifically, the Periodic Table.

“He is, in my opinion, the epitome of student-led learning,” said his mom, Melanie.

 

Melanie, a former middle school teacher, now teaches homeschool to her children, Conrad, 11, and Genevieve, 8.

With the help of the Personalized Education Program (PEP) that comes with the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (managed by Step Up For Students), Melanie and her husband, Wesley, can tailor the curriculum to fit the needs of her children, letting their interests guide the curriculum.

“One of the things that we are so grateful for with regard to homeschooling is the flexibility and freedom,” Melanie said. “Conrad really appreciates that.”

The Blacks, who live in Jacksonville, have homeschooled their children for the past two years. The 2023-24 year was their first with the PEP, which was part of House Bill 1 that was signed into law in 2023. HB1 allows for an Education Savings Account (ESA) for students who are not enrolled full-time in a public or private school. It enables parents to customize their children’s education.

All PEP students are required to take a state-approved norm-referenced test annually. (The list of tests can be found here.) Conrad and Genevieve take the Iowa Assessment-Core Battery, which includes tests for science, math, social studies, and language arts.

Conrad loves coding, and through the program Scratch he has made stop-action videos and created a video game. His physical education class is karate, where he is two belts shy of being a black belt. The PEP covers his piano lessons. He developed an interest in cooking this past year, so the PEP paid for two cooking classes.

Genevieve learned to sew during the 2023-24 school year, and the scholarship has covered supplies for that craft. She competes with a local swim club, which constitutes her physical education class.

Both kids are active readers. Melanie has assigned books purchased through PEP. Conrad is a few chapters shy of finishing “The Hobbit.”

 

The PEP also covers field trips, and the Blacks have been on the go.

There were field trips to the children’s museum at Bonnet Springs Park in Lakeland, the Cade Museum for Creativity & Invention in Gainesville, and the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens. During a family trip to the Florida Keys, they visited the The Turtle Hospital in Marathon.

“They always have ideas,” Melanie said. “I always ask them, ‘What's on your wish list for the school year? Where do you want to go? What kind of things do you want to learn about? What do you want to do?’ ”

Both Conrad and Genevieve said they enjoy being homeschooled.

“I can complete all my schoolwork and then just go on to the next one, instead of sitting around waiting for everybody else to complete whatever we're doing and waiting for the teachers to say what to do next,” Conrad said.

“One thing I noticed with homeschooling versus traditional schooling is the use of time,” Melanie said. “With homeschooling, I feel like we're able to get the most out of our time. Whereas what I noticed from when I worked as a teacher as well as when Conrad was in his neighborhood school, is that he would be waiting. He would finish his work and then he's waiting around.”

At home, when Conrad finishes one subject, he can move on to, say, the Periodic Table of Elements and satisfy that curiosity while learning the basics of chemistry.

“I've seen a bunch of stuff about it, and I knew nothing about it,” he said.

And?

“It’s pretty interesting,” he said.

For a creative project, Conrad and Genevieve both wrote books this year with a kit purchased with PEP funds.

Genevieve’s book was about two siblings who fought over ice cream.

“At the end, they got ice cream, but they probably weren't going to get ice cream if they didn't behave,” Genevive said.

So, who did they have to impress?

“Mom,” she said.

Conrad’s book is a little more involved.

Titled “Diary of an Insane Dream Warrior,” the plot includes a group of friends, a black hole, an alternate reality with floating islands, a massive, super-strong Minotaur, goat warriors, gun-slinging rabbits that resemble cowboys, an apple that can shapeshift, and government officials that cannot be trusted. He hasn’t finished it yet so he isn’t sure how it will end – other than the good guys win.

He does know that if it is made into a movie, the cast will include Chris Pratt, Chris Brown, Ryan Renolds, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

“The Rock would be great,” he said.

That is what Melanie means when she talks about the flexibility and creativity that comes with homeschooling with PEP. She can hone in on what interests her children and be innovative as they learn.

“[We use] the lessons that I create and anything they want to do. They have ideas, too, and we can say, ‘OK, let’s do it,’ ” she said. “It really offers us that ability to be so creative with learning, and so I think that's what we really appreciate most about homeschooling.”