How school choice in Florida varies by district

Students in many parts of Florida begin a new school year today, while others have already started.

If recent trends continue, nearly four in five of them are headed to public schools operated by their local district, though growing numbers will attend private or charter schools, and others will be taught at home by their parents.

While the growth of new education options has gotten attention on this blog and elsewhere, they have spread unevenly across the state. Nearly a third of Florida’s 67 school districts, most of them rural, have no charters whatsoever, while two reported no students attending private schools last year.

The maps below break down how enrollment in district, charter, private and home schools varies among Florida’s school districts, using data from the previous (2014-15) school year. They show some predictable fault lines between rural and urban areas, but other variations my be more surprising.

District schools

District-operated public schools educate the vast majority of Florida’s K-12 students.

That’s especially true in many rural and small-town districts. Tiny Franklin County and exurban Sumter County are two exceptions. While the majority of their students still attend district schools, they’re also home to highly rated charter schools that account for significant portions of their student populations.

Hundreds of thousands of students in district schools still exercise some form of school choice, either through open enrollment policies or by taking advantage of magnet schools, International Baccalaureate programs and career academies.

The darker a county on the map, the higher its percentage of students enrolled in district schools. Click on a district to see its numbers.

Charter schools

More than half a million Florida students attend schools that aren’t run by their districts, and a growing share of them are picking charter schools. Private schools still enroll more students (about 331,000), but charters, which grew to serve nearly 251,000 students last school year, are gaining fast.

In some cases, districts that might look similar on paper have had vastly different experiences with charters. Sarasota County and St. Johns County are both relatively affluent, midsize, academically high-performing school districts, but Sarasota’s charter sector is roughly 25 times as large.

A charter school in the workplace helps drive the numbers higher in Sumter County, and draws students from neighboring Marion and Lake Counties.

Private schools

Among Florida’s urban school systems, Miami-Dade is home to the largest share of private-school students. But in relative terms, private schools are most popular in midsize Martin County and rural Jefferson County, which is home to a small and struggling public-school system.

Home education

Duval County has gotten attention for having more home education students than any other Florida school district. And while it has a higher participation level than other large urban districts in the state, about 4 percent of its students are taught at home — a far lower rate than in some smaller school districts in North Florida.

In the 2015-16 school year, private school choice programs are expected to continue growing, and districts are debuting new options of their own, creating new avenues for students to select options other than their zoned schools.

Public school figures, including those for charter schools, come from preliminary Department of Education Survey 2 enrollment data. Figures for private schools and home education come from 2014-15 annual reports, which can be found here and here, respectively. This analysis excludes statewide full-time virtual education students and those attending university lab schools. The numbers used can be found in this spreadsheet.