News Flash: When Given a Choice, Floridian’s Overwhelmingly Choose District Managed Public School Options

Alternate Title: Polk County Typo Allows Charter Schools to Surge Ahead as Florida’s most popular ed choice option! 

Released just in time for National School Choice Week, RedefinED has, once again, updated its “Changing Landscapes” document, a flashy graphic that declares school choice “mainstream” by completely ignoring the idea that many (more than half) of Florida’s parents prefer to send their child to the neighborhood public school they are zoned for. RedefinED is a blog funded and  published by Step Up For Students, the organization that administers the majority of Florida’s “scholarship” (aka. voucher) programs and has been publishing the “Changing Landscapes” graphic for 9 years.

This year the graphic was shared with the headline: “Charter schools take top spot as Florida’s most popular ed choice option,” proclaiming:

“Charter schools overtook “Choice and Magnet programs” and “Open Enrollment” to become the most popular school of choice for Florida parents in 2017-18. The annual Changing Landscapes document above shows 1.63 million preK-12 students, or 47.1 percent of the 3.46 million students statewide, opted for schools outside their zoned neighborhood school.”

https://www.redefinedonline.org/2019/01/charter-schools-take-the-top-spot-as-floridas-most-popular-school-choice-option/’

The report’s KEY FINDINGS were:

• 47.1 percent of preK-12 students in Florida attend a school of choice, a decline from 47.5 percent last year
• Charter schools are now the most popular school choice option in Florida thanks to steady increase in enrollment and a sharp decline in Choice and Magnet School enrollment in Polk County.
• Largest growth rates: Gardiner Scholarship (27 percent), Advanced Certificate of Education (19 percent), McKay Scholarship public school (19 percent), Career and Professional Academies (14 percent)
• Largest declines: Choice and Magnets (minus-21 percent), full-time Florida Virtual School (minus-5 percent), private school private pay (minus-5 percent)”

Lets look a little closer at some of these findings…

-47.1 percent of preK-12 students in Florida attend a school of choice, a decline from 47.5 percent last years

Of course, that means 52.9% of Florida’s students opted for their zoned neighborhood school. This means zoned neighborhood schools are more than 6 times more popular than charter schools.

-Charter schools are now the most popular school choice option in Florida thanks to steady increase in enrollment and a sharp decline in Choice and Magnet School enrollment in Polk County

According the the blog, “Polk County accounted for the decline, and then some, in the “Choice and Magnet” programs category with a decrease of 61,036 students.” The author was unsure why Polk County’s Magnet School enrollment would decline so precipitously. He even asked the Department of Education who suggested the decline might be due to a clerical error or reclassification of students. Uh… Polk County has just over 100,000 students in their ENTIRE district. I doubt they reclassified 60% of their students. It looks like a typo is responsible for the surging popularity of charter schools as a choice option.

It is interesting that both Full Time Virtual School and Private Pay Private Schools saw declines. Is the growth of vouchers and charters coming, in part, at the expense of private pay private schools? Are Floridian’s tiring of online schools? Looking back a few years, shows a steady decline of full time virtual school ( 16,390 in 2015-16, 14,004 in 20116-17, 12,286 in 2017-18).

A closer look at the graphic’s numbers shows:

-Out of Florida’s 3.4 million students, 312,624 or 9.2% private pay for either private school or homeschool.

-Of the remaining 90.8%  (3,087,376) choosing a publicly funded education option:

• 9.3% (288,404) choose to use publicly funded vouchers for private school
• 9.4% (292,001) attend charters, which are publicly funded but privately managed
• 0.6% (19,530) are in lab schools or full time virtual
• 23.2% (718,076) attend district choice options.
• 57.3% (1,768,366) are attending their local public school. This is the choice RedefineED conveniently ignores.

All together, 80.5% (23.2% + 57.3%) of Florida’s students receiving a publicly funded education CHOOSE a district managed public school.

Do some of those public school families feel “trapped” by their zip code? Perhaps. Do they wish their schools were better resourced? Probably. 

During the last election cycle, school districts passed 24/24 proposed school funding referendums, proving Floridians support funding public schools or at least are tired of Florida per student spending being some of the lowest in the nation.

Americans, in general, like their local school.  This was demonstrated in the 2014 Education Next survey and has been documented virtually every year since 1981 by the Phi Delta Kappa poll. When asked, Americans assign far higher grades to the public schools in their local community than to the public schools of the nation as a whole. Why this holds true is up for debate… it has been suggested “If most Americans are reasonably satisfied with the public schools in their local community, which they know best, then perhaps their more critical views of public schools nationally are a product of distorted or sensational media coverage.  And, by extension, perhaps the urgency of school reform has been exaggerated.”

It is also clear that Americans want to improve the schools we already have rather than create a new system. In the 2018 pdkpoll:

“Nearly 8 in 10 Americans prefer reforming the existing public school system rather than finding an alternative approach — more than in any year since the question was first asked two decades ago. There’s no difference closer to home: 78% say they’d rather reform than replace the local school system.”

http://pdkpoll.org/results

We believe, the choice most parents want is to be able to send their children to a safe, well-funded, high quality public school in their neighborhood. Fancy graphic or not, when you respect the choice of parents who send their children to their zoned public school you would see that district managed public schools remain the most popular ed choice option. Florida’s policy members would be wise to remember that.