In the spring of 2023, the Florida Legislature and governor made ESAs accessible to all K-12 students. (Accessible means the state government provided funding for the number of students it projected would use an ESA. Many states make all students eligible but do not provide sufficient funding for all students wanting to use an ESA.) Families, schools, tutors, and other education providers responded immediately. Over 100,000 new student scholarship applications flooded Step Up For Students’ online application system. A surge of new schools and other educational options quickly followed.
Critics complained that allowing all children to access ESA scholarships was wrong because many affluent families can afford to educate their children without public funds. But today we provide all families access to publicly funded district and charter schools, so it seems appropriate to offer all families access to publicly funded ESAs, especially since it costs taxpayers less to educate students through ESAs than in district or charter schools.
While affluent students do benefit from access to ESAs, low-income students also benefit from universal access in ways that many critics and some education choice supporters do not understand.
Today over 405,000 Florida students with ESA scholarships are spending about $3 billion on a wide variety of educational products and services. Educators have responded to this huge demand for services by creating a rapidly expanding array of innovative learning options for families. Low-income students benefit from the additional learning options that other participating students help attract because low-income students have historically been underserved by the current mix of options. More learning options means low-income families have a better chance of finding and accessing programs that meet their students’ academic and social needs.
More learning options also help lessen the transportation challenges many low-income families face.
Underserved groups always benefit when the markets they rely on for essential goods and services are more effective and efficient. And universal access to ESA scholarships is rapidly improving Florida’s public education market. We are seeing in real time the creation of a virtuous cycle between supply and demand. More families using ESA scholarships (i.e., more demand) is encouraging educators to create more innovative learning options (i.e., more supply), which in turn is causing even more families to use ESAs (i.e., more demand), which in turn is causing even more educators to create more learning options (i.e., more supply).
Florida school districts are responding positively to the improvements in the state’s public education market. Researchers have consistently found that as the competition for market share in lower-income communities increases, the performance of district schools in those communities improves.
In 2002, Florida voters approved a referendum making access to the state’s publicly funded Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK) program universal. The advocates for Florida’s VPK program knew that the long-term viability of this program would be greatly enhanced if all families were allowed to participate. And thus far that has proved to be true. Like Medicare or Social Security, Florida’s pre-kindergarten program is available to everyone and politically untouchable.
Allowing all families to access Florida’s ESA programs is having a similar political effect and will help ensure these programs remain available to those students who need them the most. Florida’s low-income students are benefiting from this political reality.
