Government Money in Florida’s New School Choice Program Could Result in Unpleasant Consequences: Panelists

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.)

Florida’s new universal school choice law stipulates that when it comes to education funding, “the money follows the child.”

But that promise is being eyed with caution by some, including those advocating for religious schools and homeschoolers—groups broadly seen as the bill’s greatest beneficiaries.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the school choice bill on March 27 during a ceremony at a Catholic school in Miami. The measure goes into effect on July 1.

And many have celebrated the new law.

Author, journalist and education expert Alex Newman in an interview on EpochTV on Oct. 7, 2022. (Screenshot/Epoch TV)

The details of Florida’s new law haven’t been officially announced. But the general premise is this: public schools in Florida receive about $8,100 of funding per child per year from the state. Universal school choice will allow a family to move a child to a private school, and the money would move with the child to pay tuition.

The money also could be distributed to parents to cover homeschooling expenses.

Unwanted Complications

But government funding can come with unwanted complications, panel speakers warned during an April 13 video conference to discuss the legislation called “How will school choice impact your family?”

It was presented by the America Project, Florida Citizens Alliance, Partners For Family Values from Palm Beach County, and Florida Moms For America. Between 50 and 100 people participated.

When a government spends taxpayer money, it must provide “accountability” for how those funds are spent, speakers noted. That could lead to private schools or homeschoolers who accept the money being told by the government what to teach, the speakers warned.

And that could involve directives to teach the same concepts that parents sought to escape when they pulled their children out of public school, wary of “indoctrination,” they said.

Under the new law, private school students and homeschool students who take state funds will have to take standardized tests every year, such as the Iowa Standard Achievement Test or the SAT-10, said panel member Rebekah Ricks in an interview with The Epoch Times.

Standardized tests have always been optional for homeschoolers in the state. That’s likely to be a deal-breaker for many.

A school bus rolls down the street in Gainesville, Fla., after school on Jan. 23, 2023. (Nanette Holt/The Epoch Times)

All Florida families are eligible for the money this coming school year, with one exception, said Ricks, president of Florida Moms for America. Homeschooling recipients will be limited to 20,000 families the first year, and half of those will be low-income.

An additional 40,000 homeschooling families will be phased in each year after that. There were almost 105,000 families homeschooling in Florida during the 2021-22 school year, according to the Florida Department of Education (FDOE).

Officials haven’t said how the recipients will be selected.

Why Homeschoolers May Say, ‘No, Thanks’

Alex Newman—an education expert and Epoch Times contributor—told the group that he understands that some families need to take the money.

He and his wife, he said, send their five children to a school that accepts no government funding. But taking advantage of the bill’s offering would be tempting at $8,000 per child, he said. As Florida residents, they'd qualify for $40,000.

Homeschooling costs vary. But a family could expect to spend about $2,000 a year per child, not including income lost by a parent not working, Newman said. 

The homeschool community in Florida “really fought back hard against this bill,“ he said. ”They do not want government money. They don’t want any semblance of government money.”

But not all homeschooling parents see things the same way, Ricks told The Epoch Times after the conference.

The Florida Capitol in Tallahassee, photographed on March 14, 2023, houses the offices of government departments and state lawmakers, and holds the two domed chambers of the state legislature, the meeting places of the state House of Representatives and the state Senate. (Nanette Holt/The Epoch Times)

Ricks taught in public and private schools and ran a business associated with homeschooling, until having her own children and becoming a homeschooling parent. She closely tracked and studied the legislation as it made its journey into law.

In the past, most who chose to homeschool were spurred by a desire to give their children something better, and did it without government funding, she said. They made peace with the financial sacrifice.

Many longtime homeschoolers will suspect government interference will come with the money, she predicted.

A more recent wave of homeschoolers—often younger parents—pulled their children out of school systems they saw as failing, Rick said. Many of those seem ready to welcome the government money, something they see as their right because they pay taxes, she said.

The Florida Legislature made some accommodations for people who don’t want the cash because of possible strings attached.

Homeschoolers who don’t accept the money will be in their own category and won’t have any new level of regulation, Ricks told The Epoch Times.

The law provides for “choice navigators” to act as consultants for families accepting the funding. In the bill’s original language, working with them would have been required. Now, it’s optional.

Some homeschooling families are concerned about the effect of new families joining their ranks, now that the state money can help fund that choice. Some of those students may be poor performers, who some worry will drag down test scores, Ricks said.  And that might be used against homeschooling in the future, perhaps to push for greater regulation of it, Ricks said.

Though they often opt-out of testing in lower grades, college-bound homeschoolers to date have usually outperformed public school students in college-admissions exams, such as the SAT and ACT, Ricks said. That’s because they’re often taught with more traditional curriculum, she said.

Private-School Dependence on Public Money

Florida already has been providing scholarships for some low-income students seeking to go to private schools. Those have been administered through a program called Step Up for Students.

The program accepted “a big grant from one of the radical LGBT groups in our state, Equality Florida,“ Newman said. The group has been trying “to leverage that to try to impose some of this on our Christian schools and on our private schools,” he said.

“Right now, they can’t do that. But as more and more private schools, as more and more Christian schools, become dependent on government money, I think it’s going to be harder to resist these kinds of things.”

Step Up for Students spokesman Scott Kent wrote in an email to The Epoch Times that his organization no longer has any connection with Equality Florida.

Several private schools—including some Christian schools—had asked Step Up for Students for training on how to work with students struggling with sexual preference or gender identity, he wrote.  The organization obtained a grant from an individual not associated with Equality Florida, and used it to pay Equality Florida trainers to help three schools.

The voluntary program ended when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down in-school education, he wrote.

“I should point out that school choice scholarships have been around for 20 years in Florida, with over 70 percent of students eligible, and these terrible things the panel fears haven’t happened,” Kent wrote.

Rebekah Ricks (2L) of Florida Moms for America, shown here at a November 2021 rally against vaccine mandates at the Florida Capitol, spoke in a video conference about the state's new universal school choice law on April 13, 2023. (Courtesy of Rebekah Ricks)

Headmasters of two Christian schools in Gainesville, Florida, spoke with The Epoch Times in March, when the school choice bill passed. State scholarships already were a significant factor in their enrollment, both said.

One said 40 percent of his school’s students paid their tuition using the state money. The other said 75 percent of his students did.

The media have questioned Christian schools’ acceptance of the aid, saying the schools are “discriminating in their hiring” because “they’re not willing to hire a guy in makeup and a dress to teach their kindergarten children,” Newman said.

Ricks, during the panel discussion, agreed private schools are becoming dependent on state aid.

“On the private school side, we’ve almost programmed our parents in Florida to expect to get Step Up [for Students scholarships]. So our whole private-school system is financially dependent on this.

“If a private school doesn’t take [tuition paid with state money], then they would probably go out of business. If they only have 50 students who take this, they’re getting close to half a million dollars” in state funding for the year.

Understanding the 100-Page Law

The 100-page bill had more than 30 amendments, and keeping track of the revisions and loopholes was difficult, Ricks said.

“I really did a huge push to make sure that we had religious exemptions put into there, to make sure that was really protected. And it isn’t in some cases. Of course, in every bill, there’s a loophole.”

She was satisfied with the bill’s final language when it passed, she said. Legislators addressed all of her expressed concerns.

But in examining the law after it passed and the more than 100 education laws tied to it, she discovered one saying the online portal parents use to buy curriculum will only allow the purchase of secular school programs. Many homeschooling families prefer faith-based curricula. In the past, only two religious choices have been on the portal’s list of options.

“It was a goof,” Ricks said. “It was not intentional. I think we can fix it.”

Many of the details of signing up for state money still need to be settled, she said.

“Right now, we just don’t know.”

And she doesn’t feel it’s safe to assume the money for school choice always will be available.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) talks about school choice expansion in his state during an "Education Freedom Report Card" celebration sponsored by The Heritage Foundation in Phoenix on Oct. 25, 2022. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)

The Florida bill passed partly because the state had a $15 billion budget surplus last year, Ricks said. But extra money in the budget might not always be there, she cautioned.

And even though Gov. DeSantis is an outspoken proponent of school choice, he won’t always reside in the governor’s mansion.

Funding for the school choice program is “protected now,” Ricks said. “But somebody’s going to come in” eventually as leader of the state who might not feel the same.

State leaders have predicted the program’s financial impact will be $150 million, but that amount only represents the new revenue they'll have to raise, Ricks said. The program’s true cost is probably closer to $3 billion a year as leaders aren’t counting the part they can take out of the surplus to pay for it, she said.

Problem of Mandatory Testing

Florida now has “a halfway-decent legislature,” Newman said.

But federal courts have established a pattern of ruling that the government has not just the authority but the duty to regulate uses of public money.

Any mandatory testing is a problem, Newman said.

“Testing drives the curriculum” in every kind of school, he said. “You don’t want your kid to look like a dummy when he or she goes and takes the test.”

Lois Kaneshiki, along with the group Stop Common Core, CRT, & Action Civics in Pennsylvania, organized the Rally to End Critical Race Theory at the Capitol in Harrisburg, Penn. on July 14, 2021. (Steve Wen/Epoch Times)

Many standardized tests align with Common Core. And that forces the use of curricula aligned with Common Core.

Originally the brainchild of several Republican governors, Common Core was meant to bring American classrooms up to the level of foreign ones, and then outpace them, Ricks said. It was meant to be adopted by the states to establish more consistency.

But it changed the way of teaching math and literature, using methods unfamiliar to American parents and teachers, Ricks said.

Common Core was rushed into practice too quickly, with most states adopting its use in 2010, she said. Parents and teachers didn’t understand it, and pushed back, Ricks said.

Textbook publishers loved it, because everyone had to buy new textbooks, she said. But in the upheaval, those with a political agenda—such as proponents of critical race theory (CRT)—were able to sneak those ideas into the hastily produced textbooks.

“The big thing was, it was top down and teachers weren’t consulted,” Ricks said. “It looked good on paper but it didn’t pan out.”

Eight states, including Florida, have replaced Common Core with their state standards.

‘Cheese In a Mousetrap’

Newman has tracked school choice initiatives in other countries, including Sweden, where he has lived, he said. A universal school choice program like Florida’s was widely hailed in that country about 10 years ago.

“It was like cheese in a mousetrap, right? For a while, the mice could come and approach the cheese, and it was no big deal.

“But then, when the trap shut, it shut absolutely ruthlessly. Every single private school in Sweden that took the money was forced to teach the government curriculum, which was monstrous, even at the time.”

“They were demanding that 1st graders learn that gender is a social construct and you can [pick] your gender.”

Sweden then banned homeschooling, he said.

Students at Surf Skate Science homeschool co-op participate in hands-on learning through action sports in South Florida. (Courtesy of Surf Skate Science)

The school choice initiative ended up wrecking what had been a vibrant private school market.

And in the Canadian province of Alberta, homeschoolers were offered a $500 optional voucher, Newman said. A year later, it developed into a program with many strings attached.

Private schools and homeschooling families who accept money from the school choice program should be aware of potential requirements attached to that money, Newman warned. And more may arise in the future.

“With the shekels come the shackles,“ he said. ”Just be aware you’re going to lose a lot of your independence.”

Newman suggested that a better system, one offering more protection, could give homeschooling families property tax exemptions, such as those enjoyed by widows and veterans. That would allow them to keep more of their own money, rather than have the government tax it and give it back—with strings.

Chaos is Coming

The start of the next school year is likely to be more chaotic than usual, Ricks said.

Parents will have only four weeks between the program’s July 1 start date and the start of school in early August to change their children’s school plans.

Private schools facing a sudden influx of students probably won’t have enough teachers or classroom space ready, Ricks said. That planning usually takes place the previous winter.

And public schools won’t find out until the last minute that students have pulled out, leaving them with half-empty classrooms, she predicted.

Charter schools may lose students to private schools just before school begins, Ricks said. Then, they may start accepting students from their own waiting lists. And then those students will withdraw from the public schools where they'd been enrolled.

Teachers in red T-shirts from three unions pass out free children's books during "The Great Florida Read In" near the state Capitol, in Tallahassee, Fla. on March 14, 2023. (Nanette Holt/The Epoch Times)

Prices to Jump

Ricks is somewhat cynical about the effects of imposing school choice.

Private schools, she predicted, will raise their tuition, similar to the inflationary effect college loans have had on college tuition.

Parents now paying $10,000 a year without assistance may see that school’s tuition rise to $15,000. Because they‘ll get $8,000 through the voucher system, the amount they pay will drop to $7,000. So they’ll be happy.

More private schools will spring up, now that government money will be available, she predicted. Most are likely to be legitimate, she said. But not all of them.

“The bill will help people in the short term,” Ricks said. “It‘ll be a problem in 10 years, and they’ll have to fix it. But for the next five years, it'll be good.”

For many reasons, Newman said he'd recommend that families “avoid getting entangled in” accepting state money offered in the school choice program.

“Unless you absolutely need the money and there’s no other possible way for you to be able to give your child the education he or she deserves,” Newman said.

“I say that with a heavy heart.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated with comments from Step Up for Students after publication.