Join The James Madison Institute, Step Up For Students, and Foundation for Florida's Future for a special celebration marking the 25th anniversary of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship.
For a quarter century, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship has helped transform education in the Sunshine State and paved the way for Florida to become a national leader in educational freedom. What began as a bold effort to give more families access to educational opportunities has helped build a movement that empowers parents and expands opportunity for students across the state.
As we celebrate this monumental milestone and reflect on how far Florida has come, we must also recognize that these hard-won freedoms cannot be taken for granted. The policies and opportunities that have empowered generations of Florida families must continue to be defended against efforts to weaken, restrict, or roll back school choice.
Join us via Zoom as we celebrate 25 years of progress, honor the leaders who helped make it possible, and look ahead to the work still required to ensure that every Florida family continues to have the freedom to choose the educational path that works best for their child.
When: 11 a.m. to noon, Tuesday, Sept. 15
To register: Go here.
ORLANDO, Fla. — The name of a panel discussion at the State Policy Network’s 34th annual meeting was designed to get attention. But the most intriguing thing on the slide deck was the asterisk beside the huge letters that promised to reveal “Where the Wild Schools Are.”
“There is an asterisk on ‘schools’ for a reason: Virtually all of the programs you will hear about today are not technically schools,” said William Mattox, senior director of the J. Stanley Marshall Center for Education Freedom at the James Madison Institute in Tallahassee. “That is one reason we believe education choice, not just school choice, is so important. ESAs and other flexible scholarship tools make many of these options possible. Many of these programs simply would not exist without flexible scholarship funding.”
Mattox introduced two providers, one who founded a homeschool hybrid that operates near downtown Tampa, the other for a private school set on a 10-acre farm in Lakeland.
The third panelist, Ron Matus, director of research and special projects at Step Up For Students, also shared stories of programs across the state that he has written about since Florida lawmakers converted all scholarship programs to education savings accounts in 2023. Those include a Panhandle ranch school near the Alabama line, where students dehorn cattle and administer blood tests alongside classes in reading, math, science and social studies, as well as a South Florida couple who teach science with surfing and skateboarding.
“Much of the rest of the country is still trying to understand school choice. In Florida, we are moving from school choice to education choice in a big way,” Matus said.
For example, more than half of Florida students are now in something other than their zoned neighborhood schools. Of those, about 150,000 students are doing “a la carte learning,” receiving state support through scholarships that allow parents to mix and match education options outside of full-time schools, he said.
The point of the discussion was to share the experience of Florida with a national audience of policy researchers to show what is possible when states adopt education choice policies that give families maximum flexibility.
Tiffany Thenor shared her story of how she left her public school teaching job because she wanted the freedom to help students keep their sense of imagination and creativity as they learned core academics. In 2016, she and a friend opened a microschool in Lakeland they named WonderHere.
“The idea is that wonder should not be confined or restricted to the classroom,” said Thenor, whose program won a Yass Prize grant last year. “We created WonderHere as a proof point that we do not have to suffocate joy, wonder, and curiosity out of children in order to get strong academic outcomes.”
The main campus sits on a farm and serves 140 students. Students start the day with chores and gardening, then move into traditional academics taught in a non-traditional format. They spend at least two hours a day outside in nature and play.
Most of the students receive state education choice scholarships, so they complete required testing at the end of the year. WonderHere has been so successful that it has now expanded to locations in other parts of Florida and in South Carolina.
The county school district where the initial campus is located recently started a pilot project to offer the WonderHere model in the same public school where Thenor formerly taught.
Marissa Hess described her homeschool hybrid model, which also emphasizes learning through play. But unlike WonderHere, which is located near a small city, her Urban Cottage Educational Collaborative is only two miles north of bustling downtown Tampa in a federal opportunity zone.
“That might not seem ideal for a traditional outdoor program, but that was exactly the point,” said Hess, who was homeschooled and taught in U.S. public, private and Montessori schools. While living abroad before moving back to Tampa, she observed forest schools in northern Europe.
She said today’s children go to urbanized playgrounds that have rubberized mulch, shallow slides and no teeter-totters, no opportunities for risk, climbing or physical development.
At the same time, she heard many parents talking about their children’s occupational therapy and sensory processing challenges.
She wondered if children had enough opportunities to build core strength, ride bikes, climb, dig, and move their bodies in natural ways.
In 2015, she created Urban Cottage as a part-time program to help meet those needs. The forest playschool program uses a garden on a main thoroughfare. Hess worked with an occupational therapist and a speech pathologist to create a two-year curriculum focused on language, vocabulary, fine and gross motor development, speech and vocabulary.
In the playschool program, children grow food, compost, and learn through nature and play. There is a constant waitlist.
“Millennials are very aware of outdoor education and want it for their children because they remember part of their own childhood being analog. They want to bring back traditional childhood experiences: playing in dirt, digging holes, building strength, and learning how to grow food.”
Urban Cottage also offers instruction in core subjects, after-school tutoring and summer camps. It employs experienced educators and subject-matter experts, including professionals in science, physics, literature, and research. Classes are small and ability-based, with students often working closely with experts in one-on-one or small group settings. She intentionally caps enrollment to preserve nimbleness, allowing the program to adapt quickly to student and family needs. She also described Urban Cottage as a positive environment for teachers, giving educators freedom to teach in meaningful ways.
Hess is now working on partnerships with art studios, therapy services and other a la carte providers located near Urban Cottage to create an eco-system that offers families access to multiple services in one area.
Matus pointed out that private providers aren’t the only ones benefiting from the new era of education freedom. Public schools can participate in the new marketplace rather than stand apart from it. Florida has not mandated that school districts offer a la carte courses, but 55 of 67 districts have signed up to do so with Step Up For Students. Districts can market underused classes, such as advanced courses or specialized labs, to scholarship and homeschool families while generating revenue.
The key takeaways were that education choice is no longer about letting families choose from among existing traditional schools but about making room for new kinds of learning. In Florida, that means programs being built around beaches, barns, gardens, buses, shared public school buildings, and neighborhoods.
For families, the promise is customization. For educators, it is the chance to build around their strengths. For policymakers, it is a reminder that flexible funding and flexible rules can expand supply in ways no single system could plan from the top down.
As Mattox said, Florida’s wildest “schools” may not be schools at all. But they may point to where the future of education choice is headed as other states follow Florida’s lead.
Editor's note: This post was originally published by our partner organization, Step Up, Step Further Scholarship Fund.
Florida Chamber of Commerce aims to raise over $250 million for public schools through partnership with Step Further Scholarship Fund to promote America’s new Education Freedom Tax Credit
The Florida Chamber of Commerce is partnering with the Step Further Scholarship Fund to promote the new Education Freedom Tax Credit, a new federal initiative that will allow taxpayers to redirect a portion of their federal tax liability to fund scholarships for low-income students in Florida public schools.
More than 711,000 Florida children live in poverty, making expanded educational opportunity essential to strengthening Florida's future workforce and economic prosperity. Accessing quality education for families stuck in generational poverty is one of the Florida Prosperity Initiatives “ten root causes” of poverty that must be overcome and this new opportunity unlocks huge potential for families.
“The Florida Chamber Foundation’s Prosperity Initiative believes that in order to break cycles of generational poverty, we must expand pathways to opportunity for every child, regardless of their ZIP code,” said Mark Wilson, president and CEO of the Florida Chamber of Commerce. “The brand-new Education Freedom Tax Credit can help connect students to learning environments and resources in Florida’s public schools that support long-term success.”
The partnership was highlighted during the Florida Chamber Foundation’s 2026 Learners to Earners Workforce Solution Summit on June 23 in Tampa, which brought together business, education, nonprofit, and government leaders to discuss workforce development and talent pipeline challenges facing Florida.
Presenters included U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds from Florida’s 19th Congressional District and Republican gubernatorial candidate; Stasi Kamoutsas, Commissioner of Education for the State of Florida; and Henry Mack, assistant U.S. Secretary of Labor.
Executives from AdventHealth, Arthrex, Coca-Cola, PNC Bank, and other leading Florida employers shared their perspectives on these workforce development issues. Additionally, nonprofit leaders served as session panelists, including leaders from Collaboratory, Florida Gulf Coast University, the Florida Philanthropic Network, the Florida Virtual School, and Tampa General Hospital.
“The new federal scholarship aligns perfectly with the mission of the Chamber’s Prosperity Initiative and talent goals,” said John Kirtley, founder and chairman of Step Up For Students. “We are honored to be a sponsor of the summit and grateful for this partnership.”
“The Florida Chamber's statewide network helps connect Florida employers with opportunities to invest in students and strengthen our future workforce,” said Rachel Jones, Senior Director of Fundraising, Step Further Scholarship Fund.
The Education Freedom Tax Credit Explained
Beginning Jan. 1, 2027, individual taxpayers may receive a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit of up to $1,700 for contributions to eligible Scholarship Granting Organizations, including the Step Further Scholarship Fund. Incredibly, rather than increasing their overall tax burden, participants can redirect a portion of their federal tax liability to support scholarships for low-income public school students in Florida.
Through this initiative, Step Further Scholarship Fund will award scholarships that help students access educational resources and services such as tutoring, technology, therapy, after-school programs, and other learning supports.
An Opportunity for Florida Employers
While there is no cost to Florida employers, they can support the initiative through payroll-giving programs that make participation simple for employees while expanding scholarship opportunities in local communities.
Step Further Scholarship Fund works directly with employers to implement payroll deduction programs, provide technical support and supply employee communications resources, minimizing administrative burden while maximizing participation.
To sign up for the Step Up, Step Further interest list, go here.
Editor's note: This guest post is from our partner organization, Step Up, Step Further Scholarship Fund.
Exciting news for Florida K-12 students and families!
We are proud to announce a strategic partnership between the American Federation For Children (AFC) Scholarship Fund and Step Up, Step Further Scholarship Fund, powered by Step Up For Students to help expand access to educational opportunities through the Education Freedom Tax Credit program.
By bringing together AFC's national leadership in education choice and Step Up For Students' proven experience serving Florida families, this partnership represents an important step toward helping more students access the educational resources and learning environments that best meet their unique needs.
Beginning in 2027, the Education Freedom Tax Credit will create new opportunities to support K–12 students through scholarships that can help fund tuition, tutoring, technology, educational services, and more. Together, we're committed to ensuring Florida families have access to opportunities that help students learn, grow, and thrive.
This is about more than scholarships; it's about empowering families, strengthening communities, and creating brighter futures for Florida's next generation.
Read the full announcement here.
Editor’s note: Harvard University Program on Education Policy and Governance devoted its annual spring research conference to helping policymakers assess education choice: What is and is not working, the trade-offs involved in different programs, and the long-term effects. John F. Kirtley, the founder and chairman of Step Up For Students, the nation’s largest nonprofit scholarship funding organization, told attendees in a keynote address about his home state of Florida, where 30 years of robust education choice across the district, charter, and private sectors are not only working but have set a national standard for the other states taking their first steps on the journey. His remarks are summarized below. You can read the entire speech here. To learn more about Harvard’s Emerging School Models conference, scheduled for Sept. 17 and 18, go here.
Redefinition of public education
Growth of choice programs
Supply-side developments
Impact on rural and district schools
Educational outcomes and research
For a glimpse into the future of public education, visit Florida.
Nearly three years after landmark legislation gave Sunshine State families the flexibility to choose from an expanding number of learning options, 75% of its 67 school districts now offer a la carte services.
In a recent Johns Hopkins University Homeschool Research Lab podcast, Keith Jacobs, director of provider development at Step Up For Students, explained how putting parents in control of their children’s education dollars is changing the way Florida students learn.
“In every major service offered in human experience, the need for customer service is evident,” said Jacobs, a former public school teacher and administrator. “So, when you’re talking about education, we’ve gone from government-sponsored, government-funded within the public school sector to now families being empowered with the money and the opportunity and the knowledge to make a decision on which a la carte model they feel is most valuable for their child. It’s no longer, ‘I have to go to my neighborhood public school based on the ZIP code we live in.’ They want that level of customization.”
Last year, roughly 80,000 students were funded in the Personalized Education Program, which allows parents to design customized learning for their children who are not enrolled full time in public or private schools. Another scholarship, the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities, allows parents the choice between full-time private school or customized homeschool plans. Last year, about half of the more than 150,000 students who participated in the
UA option chose homeschooling.
“There are many different ways for families to experience homeschool education in Florida,” Jacobs told host Christy Batts, a senior research data analyst at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education, Institute for Education Policy.
Jacobs has spent nearly two years helping school districts expand learning options for students who receive funding through education savings accounts. These accounts allow parents to use funds for tuition, curriculum, therapies, and other pre-approved educational expenses. That includes services by approved district and charter schools.
Jacobs said 51 of the state’s 67 public school districts have agreed to offer some form of unbundled services. Those can be in-person or virtual, core classes or extracurricular activities.
Jacobs sees the fact that more than 50% of families in Florida exercise some form of choice as a big motivator for school districts to innovate. When it comes to developing their own offerings, Jacobs said his team at Step Up lets district leaders take the lead.
“We try to meet them where they are,” he said.
Editor's note: This post is shared by our sister organization, Step Up, Step Further Scholarship Fund, a new federal scholarship program launching in 2027 to support students in public and private schools.
At Florida TaxWatch’s policy forum, Step Up For Students Founder and Chairman John Kirtley shared how the new federal Education Freedom Tax Credit will help expand opportunity for K-12 low income district school students. “The income levels that the federal law allows are, in my opinion, pretty generous,” Kirtley said. “They’re 300% of the area’s median income, which in Florida will be anywhere up to probably $250,000. However, a scholarship organization can set its own income limits.”
The new tax credit will continue to allow Step Up, Step Further, sister organization of Step Up For Students, to focus on serving the lowest-income students in Florida.
Kirtley went on to illustrate how Florida school districts have seen a dramatic increase in graduation rates since 1981, when the graduation rate hovered under 50%. He noted that a statewide push for greater accountability in schools and grading them has resulted in a graduation rate of over 90%.
“That’s an incredible improvement, and we should all be very proud of that. A great example of how the districts have responded is very close to home for me. My high school, Fort Lauderdale High School, when schools were first graded back in 1999, my high school was an ‘F.’ And it was an ‘F’ for several years,” Kirtley said.
Read the full article at Florida Politics > https://floridapolitics.com/archives/791109-john-kirtley-makes-case-for-choice-encouraging-use-of-education-savings-accounts/
Florida’s K–12 education landscape continues to shift toward choice. During the 2024–25 school year, 53% of all K–12 students — 1,889,532 children — attended a public, private, or home education option of their parents’ or guardians’ choice. Just one year after crossing the 50% threshold for the first time, Florida’s school choice participation grew by nearly 100,000 additional students.
“Each year, Florida families have made it clear that they want more options for their children’s education,” said Gretchen Schoenhaar, CEO of Step Up For Students, the Florida non-profit that administers the state’s education choice scholarship programs.
“Increasingly, parents and guardians are willing to mix and match private and public resources to choose the ones that work best for their family.”
Since the 2008–09 school year, Step Up For Students, in collaboration with the Florida Department of Education, has tracked enrollment across a variety of choice programs. The 2023–24 school year represented a historic milestone: the first time more than half of all K–12 students in the state attended a school of choice. The 2024–25 school year continued that upward trend.
The Changing Landscapes report draws from Florida Department of Education data and removes, where possible, duplicate counts to provide a clearer picture of school choice participation. For example, it adjusts for home education students supported by the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities (FES-UA) and eliminates double-counted students in career and professional programs. It also excludes prekindergarten students in FES-UA and programs such as Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK), as the report focuses solely on K–12 education.
While many families still choose their neighborhood public schools, Florida’s education system now offers a broad range of options to meet diverse student needs. As in past years, public school choice remains dominant, occupying four of the top five spots in overall enrollment. Charter schools are the most popular single option, followed by district open enrollment programs, the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options (FES-EO), career and professional academies, and Advanced International Certificate of Education (AICE) programs for upperclassmen.
The largest increases in enrollment occurred in the FES-EO program, which has merged with the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program, and the Personalized Education Program (PEP), a scholarship that helps fund education at home.
Among public school options, AICE enrollment grew nearly 17%, career and professional academies grew 6.2%, and open enrollment grew 4.6%. While overall district enrollment appeared to decline slightly, these public school choice options still grew more than charter schools (independent public schools), which grew just 2.3%. This may suggest that school districts could benefit from expanding their own menu of diverse school options to better retain families.
Choice remains strong within Florida’s public school system. More than 1.2 million of the state’s 2.9 million public school students attended a school of choice, while another 688,000 students outside the public system enrolled in private schools or home education programs.
A newer option to keep an eye on is district schools offering classes and services to students on an education choice scholarship, paid for with their scholarship funds. Currently 37 of Florida’s 67 districts have been approved as providers with Step Up For Students, and another 11 are in the process of being approved. These arrangements further blur the line between public and private and emphasize that the focus remains on the individual needs of students.
With so many options available, Florida’s education system has entered a new phase. Choice is no longer an alternative; it is the norm. Families routinely evaluate multiple pathways, and whether they select a different option or remain in their assigned public school, they are making an active choice. The result is an education landscape in which public, private, and home education options coexist and evolve together, reflecting the reality that students and families have different needs, and that those differences matter.
A Tampa Bay area morning TV show kicked off National School Choice Week by highlighting a family who benefits from a state K-12 scholarship.
Arielle Frett appeared on Fox 13’s “Good Day Tampa Bay” program on Monday with her son, AnyJah, a ninth grader at The Way Christian Academy in Tampa. She said she moved to Florida from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, in 2017 to find better educational opportunities for AnyJah, who has severe autism.
“No teachers were able to work with him on his level,” Frett told Fox 13 reporter Heather Healy. “Most of his learning in English and math are on fifth and sixth grade levels now.”
A U.S. military veteran and single mother of two, Frett said she would not have been able to afford a private school for her son without the scholarship.
She said AnyJah, who receives the Family Empowerment Scholarship for students with Unique Abilities, is “loved, protected, and thriving” at his school, where class sizes of 10 to 12 students allow for more individual attention. He can also receive his therapies during school.
The segment also featured information about Florida’s robust education choice options. Those include traditional public schools, district magnet schools, charter schools, private schools, microschools, homeschools, virtual schools, and customized education programs that allow parents to mix and match.
“We’ve gone from education and funding through the system to now empowering families by putting the money in their hands and allowing them to make the most appropriate educational decisions for families,” said Keith Jacobs, director of provider development at Step Up For Students, which administers most of the state’s education choice scholarships.
Jacobs has spent the past year working with school districts to provide individual courses to scholarship families whose students do not attend public or private school full time, paid for with scholarship funds. About 70% of Florida school districts are participating.
The scholarship application season for the 2026-27 school year begins Feb. 1. Visit Step Up For Students to learn more and apply.
During a 1916 football game between Georgia Tech and Cumberland, Georgia Tech coach John Heisman famously urged his players on to victory- “You're doing all right, team, we're ahead. But you just can't tell what those Cumberland players have up their sleeves. They may spring a surprise. Be alert, men! Hit 'em clean, but hit 'em hard!” Cumberland committed 15 turnovers in the game and had one of their players getting tackled for a six-yard loss on an attempt at an offensive rush declared their “play of the game.” Georgia Tech won the game 222 to 0.
This story has repeatedly come to mind repeatedly over the last decade while reading stories about the competition between surging Florida and floundering New York.
The New York Post reports that New York City Schools will spend $42,000 per student this year. Spending $840,000 on a classroom of 20 fourth graders might seem a bit pricey, especially given that judging on their 2024 NAEP performance, nine of them will be reading at “below basic.” New Yorkers must pay sky-high taxes to support the world’s most expensive illiteracy generator/job programs, which is one of the reasons so many New Yorkers keep becoming Floridians. Now, however, it isn’t just people and companies migrating from New York to Florida; New York’s Success Academy schools are also heading south.
Through the wizardry of Stanford’s Educational Opportunity Project graph generator, I’ve placed New York Success Academies (Marked 1-7) in the graph for the overall state of Florida for academic proficiency. Schools are dots; green dots are higher than average, blue below average, etc.
You don’t see many high-poverty schools (graph runs from low poverty on the right to high poverty on the left) with students scoring 3ish grade levels above average, but that is exactly what Success Academy has consistently delivered in New York.
Being a rational human, you might think that New York policymakers would be falling over themselves to get as many Success Academies operating as possible, but that is just you being silly again. New York lawmakers maintain a statewide cap on the number of charter schools. Apparently, New York lawmakers feel the need to keep safe from, well, learning.
Florida, on the other hand, does not have a cap on charter schools. Rather than treating highly successful schools specializing in educating disadvantaged students as a public menace, Florida is rolling out the red carpet for highly effective school models. Success Academy plans to open 40 schools in Florida over the next 10 years, something which New York law prohibits.
Is it too much? Too much winning? No, Florida, you have to win more! Or to paraphrase Coach Heisman “You're doing all right, Florida; you’re ahead. But you just can't tell what those New Yorkers have up their sleeves. They may spring a surprise. Be alert, men! Hit 'em clean, but hit 'em hard!” Capitalizing on the abject folly of New York policymakers is hitting both clean and hard.
