TAVERNIER, Fla. – Every year, millions of students across America learn the foundational concept of place value in math. But it’s a safe bet few of them learn it at the beach.
At the first microschool in the Florida Keys, that’s exactly what a handful of kindergartners and first graders were doing with their teacher last week. Standing in the shade of buttonwoods on the edge of the Atlantic, they used mahogany seed pods, mangrove propagules, and sea grape leaves to help their brains grasp the idea.
In Florida, this is public education.
The students all use state-supported school choice scholarships to attend Coastal Glades Microschool, a new elementary school founded by former public school teachers Samantha Simpson and Jennifer Lavoie. Both 13-year educators, Simpson and Lavoie wanted a school that reflected their preferred approach to teaching and learning, as well as the goals and values of the families they sought to serve.
The result: Coastal Glades is Montessori-based, immersed in the outdoors, and deeply tied to the local community.
It’s also totally theirs to run as they see fit.
“We’re free. We own it. We don’t have anyone telling us what to do,” Lavoie said. “That’s priceless.”
Florida is leading the country in education freedom, with more than 500,000 students now using choice scholarships. Coastal Glades is another distinctive example of what that freedom looks like.
Microschools are popping up by the hundreds. Former public school teachers are the vanguard in creating them. All the new learning options are stunning, not just in volume but in diversity. In Florida, at least 150 Montessori schools participate in the choice scholarship programs, and at last count, at least 40 “nature schools” serve Florida families, too.
This movement is self-propelled. It’s driven by parents, teachers, and communities who are realizing more every day that public education is in the middle of a sea change. Now, they get to decide what “a good education” looks like.
For the past six years, Simpson and Lavoie worked together at the same school. As choice options exploded around them, freedom kept tapping them on the shoulder.
“We said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just pick up these four walls and move? And it just be us?’” Lavoie said.
To get their bearings, Simpson called a friend, another former public school teacher who founded a microschool. This one happened to be 90 miles north in Broward County, the unofficial microschool capital of America. The friend gave her good advice. She also said starting her own school was “the best thing I’ve ever done.”
Learning at Coastal Glades is proudly “place based.” The colorful communities that populate the islands between the Everglades and the sea are an endless source of exploration and inspiration. Simpson and Lavoie want their students to know and love where they live, so they can grow up to be good citizens and thoughtful stewards.
“Being in the community, being in nature, that’s where you’re going to learn,” Simpson said.
The students learned about bees from a local guy who harvests mangrove honey. They visited a berry farm on the mainland. Even more exotic trips are on tap: To Everglades National Park. To the Keys’ sea turtle hospital. Even to a reef where the students will be able to snorkel near nurse sharks. “We want them to learn that some scary things are not really scary,” Simpson said.
Nearly every day, the students visit natural areas for play-based learning. After the math lesson beneath the buttonwoods, for example, they went hunting for hermit crabs and jellyfish.
“This is just as important as testing, as reading, as anything,” Simpson said. “We want to bring back childhood and the love of learning.”
That’s exactly why Alejandra Reyes enrolled her 5-year-old daughter, Daniella. Daniella’s curiosity is blossoming, Reyes said, because she’s in a small school with more individualized attention and more hands-on learning.
“I didn’t want her to be in class sitting down all day. She’s such a free-spirited little girl,” said Reyes, a stay-at-home mom whose husband is a marine mechanic. “She’s learning so much on her little adventures. It’s, ‘What’s this? What’s that? Let’s look it up.’ “
“We got so lucky that my daughter’s first experience with school is this microschool.”
Simpson and Lavoie like the state of Florida’s academic standards. They use them to guide instruction. But they’re not tethered to pacing guides, and they can switch gears or directions whenever it makes sense. They do that often with their one older student, a fifth grader who was bored in his prior school because he wasn’t being challenged.
At the beach the other day, the older student got to learn about mass, volume, density, and buoyancy while his younger classmates were doing the lesson on place value.
Simpson set out two buckets, one filled with freshwater, one filled with saltwater. The student built a mini boat out of aluminum foil to float on the surface of each, then carefully piled pennies into it to see which boat in which bucket could sustain the most weight. (The one in saltwater won.)
“He loves engineering and problem solving,” Simpson said. And the school has the flexibility to accommodate him with more advanced lessons.
As it becomes even more mainstream, school choice in Florida is experiencing some growing pains. Coastal Glades represents some of those challenges, too.
For classroom space, the school rents a 250-square-foot room in a church. The church meets fire codes for dozens of parishioners, but not for a handful of students. Coastal Glades isn’t the only unconventional learning option to learn about fire codes the hard way – see here, here, and here – but its predicament takes the cake.
In lieu of installing an expensive sprinkler system, which Simpson and Lavoie could not afford, the pair hired a local firefighter, at $37 an hour, to hang out while students were in the building. Since the additional requirements only kick in when there are more than five students, Coastal Glades was able to drop the firefighter as long as it capped enrollment.
Next year, the school will be in another building that shouldn’t have those issues, which means it will be able to serve more families.
Word’s already out on the “coconut telegraph” – that’s Keys-speak for grapevine – that the new school will be growing.
Reyes has no doubt that other parents will respond the same way she did.
“Times have changed. Schools are different,” she said. “What kid doesn’t want to be learning outdoors?”
So last week I related the incredibly weak evidence for the “death” of district schooling in Arizona. That evidence shows flat to gently sloping enrollment district enrollment, all-time highs for spending and remarkable academic improvement. Given that Arizona districts look more like an Olympic gold medalist than a corpse, I decided to check Florida for signs of mortality.
Behold: the “death” of Florida district education:
Rather than “dying” Florida school districts have added a number of students more than three times the size of the K-12 enrollment of Wyoming between 2003 and 2021 despite the growth of choice options. Moreover, Florida’s spending per pupil increased faster than inflation during this period, so more students and a higher real spending per pupil is a very odd way to “destroy” school districts.
Private choice enrollment has grown since 2021 (the latest data available across sectors) and now is likely slightly above Florida charter school enrollment. That would be because Florida’s lawmakers have (wisely) adopted policies to create a demand-driven K-12 system. Let’s check the NAEP to see how that went pre-pandemic:
Not bad, especially considering that Florida made huge NAEP progress before 2003 (before all states began participating in NAEP). As you can see from Figure 1, a large majority of Florida students still attend district schools, so we can safely infer that those district schools perform far better than they did before the advent of choice in the 1990s.
Fourth graders make volcanoes in science lab at the Children's Reading Center Charter School in Palatka, Florida
Across Florida, 14 schools received National Blue Ribbon honors this year from the U.S. Department of Education.
Those recognized for exemplary performance include a Catholic school, five magnet or choice schools and five charter schools.
Among the winners is a charter school based in rural Putnam County that focuses on the needs of economically disadvantaged students. The Children’s Reading Center of Palatka uses a self-paced model that rejects traditional textbooks. Instead, teachers design their own lessons based on students’ needs.
“We focus on a standard for as long as needed until children are comfortable moving forward. There are no boxed curriculums at our school!” the school says on its Blue Ribbon profile page. The Title I school serves 257 students in kindergarten through sixth grade.
MAST@FIU was among the Sunshine State’s magnet winners. Situated on Florida International University’s Biscayne Bay campus, it represents a collaboration between the university and the Miami-Dade School District. It offers a blend of face-to-face instruction and community-based projects with a focus on marine and environmental science.
Queen of Peace Catholic Academy of Gainesville, which serves 470 students in kindergarten through sixth grade, was a repeat winner, having made the national list in 2011. It was the only private school on the list this year.
The U.S. Department of Education has given the awards annually for 40 years to more than 9,000 schools across the nation.
All schools are recognized based on test scores for all students, test scores among subgroups and graduation rates for either high performance or closing achievement gaps. The list of gap-closing schools is shorter and includes no Florida schools this year.
Students at St. Lawrence Catholic School in Tampa brought their bright smiles and are ready to start the school year.
School is back in session for Catholic schools across all seven dioceses in Florida.
This year, each of them is seeing another enrollment increase.
This broad, widespread enrollment growth is part of a longer-term trend that makes Florida stand out on the national landscape.
In a recent report published by Step Up For Students, only 10 states showed growth in Catholic school enrollment over the past decade. Of those 10, Florida is the only state with a significant number of students enrolled in Catholic schools.
These numbers may continue to change as some schools are still enrolling new students, but here is a preliminary look at year-over-year enrollment growth by diocese.
Diocese of Venice – 8%
Diocese of Palm Beach – 6%
Diocese of St. Augustine – 5%
Archdiocese of Miami – 3.5%
Diocese of St. Petersburg – 3.5%
Diocese of Orlando – 3%
Diocese of Pensacola/Tallahassee – 2%
Katie Kervi, Assistant Superintendent for the Diocese of Palm Beach, said that over the last three years enrollment in the diocese’s schools has grown by at least 6%.
“We are excited to see our schools flourishing and look forward to welcoming new students and families into our community,” she said. “Our Catholic schools provide a faith-based education paired with high academic standards. I believe the consistent increases in enrollment can be attributed to these strong foundations and because all families now have the opportunity to choose the educational environment that is best for their children.”
Legislation that went into effect on July 1 made the state’s Family Empowerment Scholarships available to all students who are eligible for K-12 public education.
Alina Mychka’s daughter was awarded a scholarship for the 2023-24 school year by Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.
Her child started the year at Holy Family Catholic School in Jacksonville, and she says she is thankful she can send her child to a safe environment with a rigorous curriculum that reinforces her values.
Mychka immigrated to America from Ukraine eight years ago. She sends any extra dollars her family can spare back to her relatives in their war-ravaged home country.
Without the scholarship, she says, Catholic school would likely not be an option for her family.
In 410, after years of enough backstabbing, civil wars and barbarian invasions to make a Games of Thrones scriptwriter blush, the Saxons invaded the Roman province of Britannia. The Roman Britons called upon the emperor for aid, which resulted in what is known as the Rescript of Honorius. In this rescript (a formal reply) Emperor Honorius, distracted by internal rebellion and Visigoth invasion, related “Britannia must look to her own defense.” It was not apparent then, but centuries of Roman rule over Britain ended.
Florida families suffered an Honorius-style rescript of their own in 2020 with the closure of schools. One can only describe the damage suffered by students as horrifying, and it could have been worse. The Florida Education Association, for example, pursued litigation all the way to the Florida Supreme Court in the hope of keeping schools closed. The case went against the FEA, but the message was clear: you are on your own.
Florida families evidently have not forgotten, as Step Up for Students has awarded 410,365 full-time scholarships under Florida’s expanded choice policies. Florida families are filing approximately 1,400 new applications daily. Being less dependent on a group of people eager to throw your children overboard when times get tough apparently appeals to many.
That constitutes a promising start, but it understates the significance of Florida’s new universal eligibility: Every Florida student now has an exit option. The ability to leave and take your money with you isn’t just a form of accountability; it’s the ultimate form of accountability. All Florida students will benefit from the universal expansion of choice regardless of whether they use the program.
American families must look to the defense of their children, and states like Florida have empowered them to do just that. Not coincidentally Americans have been moving to Florida in astounding numbers. Dominoes will accordingly continue to fall.
In 2019, just months away from what became the COVID-19 schooling debacle, this blog included a discussion of Robert Pondiscio’s concept of the “Tiffany Test.” Pondiscio defined students as a “Tiffany” if they had bought into the promise of education but had been let down by the system. The post included the following prediction:
"Maybe it’s a little early, maybe the time is not quite yet, but the day is coming when our K-12 policies will fully and appropriately respect the dignity of families to exercise autonomy in schooling. When that day comes, the unfulfilled, the disappointed, the mistreated, the misfit, and the dreamer will seek better situations for themselves.
They won’t ask for permission but rather will be exercising their rights as free people. Pleading with adults to do what is right won’t be the first or only option. When that day comes, “Tiffany” can speak softly, but her voice will be imperial; the system will center around her at last."
There was no shortage of Tiffany students in 2019 but a great many more beginning in 2020. In Florida and many other states, they’ll be in charge of their own education.
When Florida lawmakers debated HB 1 earlier this year, the discussion largely focused on how the legislation would dramatically expand education choice through universal eligibility and flexible spending options for families.
Another part of the bill inspired far less discussion but got the attention of school district leaders across the state: a review of public school regulations.
By Nov. 1, the state Board of Education must develop and recommend “potential repeals and revisions” to the state’s education code “to reduce regulation of public schools.”
“This is a great step towards keeping our public schools competitive” in an era of expanded options, said Bill Montford, a former Democratic state Senator from North Florida who heads the Florida Association of District School Superintendents.
“Traditional, neighborhood public schools have been, and will continue to be, the backbone of our K12 education system,” he
Bill Montford
said. “We want our schools to be the first choice for parents, not the default choice, and to do that we need to reduce some of the outdated, unnecessary, and quite frankly, burdensome regulations that public schools have to abide by,”
Before they propose any changes, state board members must consider feedback from a diverse group that includes teachers, superintendents, administrators, school boards, public and private post-secondary institutions and home educators.
To fulfill that requirement, board members set up a survey link that will accept suggestions through today. A group of superintendents submitted a recommendation list that covers topics that include construction costs, budgets, enrollment, school choice, instructional delivery and accountability. Their pitches included proposals to:
"We’d like for them to recognize all parental choice equally and give school districts the same flexibility and opportunity to innovate provided to other publicly funded options,” said Brian Moore, general counsel for the superintendents association that Montford leads. He added that the superintendents would like to see more cooperation between school districts and the Department of Education.
This effort isn’t the first the state has made to provide school districts with relief from what they see as burdensome regulations. But to some leaders the process seems more like a game of Whac-A-Mole, with new regulations soon replacing the ones that get repealed.
Ten years ago, Gov. Rick Scott signed SB 1096, which repealed some regulations based on the recommendations of a group of superintendents, including Montford. The bill repealed a requirement approved in 2010 that all public schools and universities gather and report statistics showing how much material each had recycled during the year. It also ended a 2002 requirement that schools submit plans for teaching foreign languages to kindergarteners.
Other efforts to ease the regulatory burden have targeted schools that meet certain conditions. Since 2017, schools with strong test scores and consistently high letter grades could be qualified as “Schools of Excellence,” which grants their leaders more flexibility.
Moore said he hopes things work out this time around, but said the key is allowing changes to apply across the board, not to certain schools or districts, and to carefully consider future regulations and their potential effects.
Kaylia Powell graduated first in her class in May from Abundant Life Christian Academy.
MARGATE, Florida – Kaylia Powell’s home life is in a constant state of flux.
At times, she has lived apart from her mom and separated from her brothers and sisters. She has lived with friends and, for a few months this year, at the home of a teacher. She has lived with her grandmother. She has lived in a motel.
When asked recently about her hopes and dreams, she replied with one word: “Stability.”
The chaos used to leave her angry at her assigned school, sulking in class because she didn’t have the things her classmates had. Kaylia doesn’t know how close she came to quitting school and becoming a statistic. But she feels she was going down that path.
What changed was the opportunity to attend a private school with the help of a Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options. It is one of several education choice scholarships managed by Step Up For Students,which hosts this blog.
At Abundant Life Christian Academy, a private K-12 faith-based school in Margate, Kaylia found classmates who didn’t judge, teachers who cared, academics that were challenging and enough sports and clubs to keep her nonstop busy.
Kaylia enrolled as a sophomore and called the move “life changing.”
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Christina Sheffield’s son, Graham, was soaring ahead of classmates. She wanted a learning environment that challenged him, so she created one herself.
She pulled him out of a private school and created a customized education plan. Using her know-how as a certified elementary virtual school teacher, she enrolled him in a hybrid homeschool co-op and designed projects to enhance the curriculum his former private school as using.
But there was a missing piece in her son's custom education plan: Their neighborhood public school.
That changed when the Tampa Bay area mom received the results of her son’s test for academic giftedness. Now officially identified, Graham, like other gifted homeschoolers, was able to access services offered by his local school district. He started going to a weekly gifted class at his zoned elementary school.
“It was his favorite day of the week,” Sheffield recalled. “After I picked him up on the first day, he said, ‘Mom, I finally feel like I fit in.’ That made my mom’s heart happy.”
Other students in similar circumstances might not be so lucky. Florida law allows homeschoolers to enroll in dual enrollment classes that lead to college credit, free of charge. Students participating in the state's growing array of educational choice options have access to extracurriculars at their local public schools under the state's "Tim Tebow law." But that same guaranteed access does not extend to math class.
Districts can offer homeschoolers access to career and technical courses, or services for exceptional students, included gifted programming for students like Graham. And a new law allows districts to receive proportional funding for any student who chooses to enroll part-time while participating in other educational options.
But they are not required to offer this opportunity.
A new analysis by the advocacy group yes.everykid. evaluated policies in all 50 states and found that states vary widely in policies that grant students access to their local public schools, regardless of where they live or whether they want to enroll full-time.
Florida's policies place it in the top 10 among states, but it has not yet guaranteed that every student has the right to access public schools on their terms.
Among the findings:
Florida tied with Alaska for ninth place when it came to allowing nonpublic and homeschool students access to public schools. Idaho, which met every criterion used in the rankings, was No. 1, followed by Iowa and Minnesota, which tied for second place.
Though HB 1 codified the option for Florida public school districts to offer part-time enrollment options and receive prorated state funding, it left the decision whether to participate up to the individual districts.
Districts may be reluctant to embrace this new flexibility, and some state policies make this understandable. For example, state class size limits may add to the staffing headaches for districts hoping to accommodate students who enroll part-time.
The new law also creates a process for districts to identify regulatory barriers that are preventing them from responding to the needs of students and families.
For decades, some districts have resisted the oncoming tsunami of new education options. Others have chosen to ride it, and now have new flexibility at their disposal. The question is whether they will capitalize on that flexibility to meet the needs of their students.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis coined the notion of American states serving as “laboratories of democracy” in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, a 1932 Supreme Court decision.
“A single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country,” Brandeis wrote.
With regards to education freedom, Arizona and Florida have been collaborative laboratories.
Arizona lawmakers created the nation’s first scholarship tax credit program in 1997. This law allows individual taxpayers to donate to a non-profit scholarship granting program and receive a dollar-for-dollar credit against state income taxes for the donation. A few years later, Florida lawmakers created the nation’s largest scholarship tax credit program.
In 1999, Florida lawmakers passed the McKay Scholarship Program, the nation’s first private choice program for students with disabilities. A few years later, Arizona lawmakers attempted to emulate the McKay program. Arizona choice opponents killed this program in the Arizona court system, prompting Arizona choice supporters to develop the nation’s first account-based choice program, the Empowerment Scholarship Account Program. Empowerment Scholarship Accounts withstood a court challenge, and a few years later Florida created what remains the nation’s largest account-based choice program.
Arizona and Florida’s innovators have learned and borrowed from each other. Thousands of unsung heroes from across the country also contributed to the development of this experiment, which remains ongoing. Teams in multiple states will work to optimize the use of accounts in a decentralized learning process. Oklahoma lawmakers have become the first state to adopt a large refundable tax credit for private education. This program likewise bears close examination over time; you never know what the next trend might go.
America has entered a difficult period with Baby Boomers exiting the labor market and a baby-bust diminished cohort of (mostly) their grandchildren entering the education system. Currently the baby bust is approaching the age of 16, so get used to seeing those “Help Wanted” signs. America’s two major political parties seem entirely incapable of reaching a consensus on reforming immigration. Something must give, but it remains unclear what it will be.
All of this is the background soundtrack to America’s public-school system as it grows increasingly dysfunctional and controversial. A complex web of local, state and federal authority attempting to govern a system of local monopolies marked by regulatory capture by unions and major contractors was also an experiment, but not a happy one. Our outcomes do not suggest that our experiment in bureaucracy represents the optimal method for educating students or in recruiting and fulfilling the aspirations of educators.
Our experiment in educational freedom must continue to conclude our experiment in educational frustration. Arizona and Florida have played crucial roles thus far, but new states have entered the collaboration. Young people are the future of any society, and they are getting to be in short supply. Some states are far more eager to give families a better return on their investment than others. America’s ongoing experiment with competitive federalism will soon merge with the experiment in educational freedom.
Herah Varmah, who received a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, speaks at the bill signing ceremony for HB 1, which established eligibility for education savings accounts for all Florida students. She now serves on the staff of the American Federation for Children.
Editor's note: The following column by Hera Varmah, a beneficiary of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and the communication and events assistant at the American Federation for Children, originally appeared June 16 in the Florida Courier.
All Florida families with children in grades K-12 are now eligible to receive a state scholarship to find the best education setting for their kids – the kind that made a huge impact on my life, and the lives of my siblings.
I am one of 12 children whose parents are immigrants from Liberia and Jamaica, and in my assigned public school, I was a failing, unmotivated student. I never thought that I would go to college, and thus I would end up just like my parents in poverty. This was the life I envisioned for myself.
Everything changed when my parents enrolled me in Academy Prep Center of Tampa, a private, nonprofit middle school where three of my siblings were already attending. Its rigorous college-track curriculum proved to be the challenge that I needed. With the help of several teachers and their personalized instruction, I thrived in my new environment.
I then went on to Tampa Catholic High School, where I again successfully met high expectations. After graduating in 2017, I went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in food science and technology from Florida A&M University in Tallahassee.
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