Florida Touts Year of ‘Extraordinary’ Education Accomplishments in 2023

State adds school choice, boosts parents’ rights, ties school bathroom-use to biology, reopens fast post-hurricane, offers teaching incentives. Unions object.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at the signing of the state's universal school choice bill at Christopher Columbus High School in Miami on March 27, 2023. Courtesy of the Florida Governor's Office

In 2023, under the leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis—a Republican candidate for president—Florida educational policies caught the attention of analysts as exceptional and earned praise from parental rights activists.

Yet a teachers’ organization insists that Florida’s education policies don’t benefit education.