The Florida Policy Institute (FPI) made numerous headlines last spring after the organization estimated Florida’s Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES) and new Personalized Education Program (PEP) “would cost the state about $4 billion in the initial year.”
This estimate did not include the additional scholarships provided under the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC) program, which likely reached $700 million in scholarships last year.
This fall, eager to prove itself right, but lacking the necessary data, the think tank made more headlines by criticizing the Florida Department of Education (DOE) for not providing information on scholarship enrollment.
Anyone familiar with education data reporting would know the request was hasty. Public school enrollment data from FLDOE aren’t available until later in the fall after the state gathers and analyzes first-quarter enrollment survey results from districts.
The group also claimed the state had “allocated a total of $4.2 billion for vouchers.” FPI’s newest forecast now appears to include the tax credit scholarship program.
Despite technically lowering its estimate, FPI’s forecasts are still off the mark.
FPI’s initial estimates claimed FES and PEP alone would combine to cost the state $4 billion in the first year. When looking at current enrollment and calculating a cost based on scholarship values, which vary by grade and county, a more accurate estimate is closer to $2 billion.
| Educational Options scholarships | Unique Abilities Scholarships | Personalized Education Program (PEP) | Total Family Empowerment Scholarships (FES) | |
| Number of Students | 130,599 | 83,941 | 18,688 | 233,288 |
| Scholarship Value | $1,025,202,150 | $827,658,260 | $147,541,760 | $2,000,402,170 |
| Average Scholarship | $7,850 | $9,860 | $7,895 | $8,577 |
Please note: these enrollment numbers are still fluctuating. This estimate assumes all students currently awarded or enrolled will be funded and continue to use the scholarship throughout the year.
When including tax credit scholarships, the total comes to $2.99 billion, or $1.2 billion less than FPI’s third and most recent estimate. FPI’s most recent estimate is off by 41 percent.
| Total FES + PEP | Tax credit scholarships | Total Scholarship Students | |
| Number of Students | 233,228 | 126,028 | 359,256 |
| Scholarship Value | $2,000,402,170 | $984,908,820 | $2,985,310,990 |
| Average Scholarship | $8,577 | $7,815 | $8,310 |
So how did FPI miss the mark?
FPI later revised that figure down to $1.1 billion after realizing they forgot to take existing tax credit scholarship students out of the count of private school students not on scholarship.
Despite reducing expenses for previous private school students by $800 million to account for tax credit scholarship students, FPI’s second estimate remained at $4 billion.
FPI managed to accomplish this feat by assuming 114,000 students would be on the PEP program, despite participation being limited to 20,000 students in the first year. FPI also appears to have overestimated public-to-private-school switchers by about $700 million, but that’s a story for another day.
In addition, according to the most recent figures, about 85,000 new scholarship students previously attended private schools. These students have a total scholarship value of about $400 million less than FPI projected in its revised estimate.
FPI’s most recent $4.2 billion estimate also makes some errors.
State lawmakers set aside a cushion of $350 million in case scholarship funding exceeded estimates. FPI counts this reserve as money spent, which it is not.
They count $436 million of public-school support as voucher spending. Of that total figure, $178 million in the state-funded discretionary base would have gone to school districts anyway. The state legislature added the remaining $258 million state-funded “discretionary local effort supplement” this year to ensure school districts weren’t shorted funds for students who remained in public schools.
FPI’s cost estimate also includes both the total value of tax credits available this year and tax credit funding carried forward from last year. The carry forward is money that was raised by scholarship funding organizations last year, and needed to be spent on the first quarter of this school year. Funds raised later in this fiscal year will be carried forward to next year and used to help fund scholarships in 2024-25.
In other words, FPI is counting future spending as this year’s spending.
The actual figures might fluctuate a bit as numbers firm up later in the fall. But, to put it mildly, FPI’s first year estimates have not borne out. With a little patience and another year or two, Florida might reach the $4 billion mark for educational choice scholarships if tens of thousands more students enroll in our programs.
