Florida’s New Education Commissioner Doesn’t Want Government to Run Schools

Henry Mack isn’t just arguing for more school choice. He’s questioning the very idea of publicly operated schools.

Dr. Henry Mack, Florida’s newly appointed Commissioner of Education, once described himself as an “innovator, a disruptor and a relationship builder.”

It appears he may be ready to disrupt Florida’s K-12 public schools.

How? Mack doesn’t believe the government needs to run public schools at all.

Floridians should probably pay attention to that.

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Dr. Mack, appointed Florida Commissioner of Education in July 2026, comes to the job with little traditional K–12 education experience and no background as a K–12 teacher, principal, superintendent or school district administrator. With undergraduate and graduate degrees in philosophy and theology and a doctorate in education administration and philosophy of education, his career has been concentrated largely in higher education, career and technical education, workforce development and education-to-employment policy.

From 2019 to 2023, Mack served at the Florida Department of Education, ultimately as Senior Chancellor, overseeing Florida Colleges, Career and Adult Education, Vocational Rehabilitation, Blind Services, Workforce Education and Economic Alignment, and the Commission for Independent Education. Most recently, Mack served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor overseeing the Employment and Training Administration.

In other words, the man now responsible for overseeing Florida’s K–12 public education system has little traditional K–12 experience and questions whether government needs to be running those schools at all.

And this morning, he described how he views that system.

In his post on X, Mack wrote:

“While a free society has a real interest in an educated citizenry, that interest does not require the state to run the schools.”

He continued:

“Why not give the money to the family? Let parents choose among approved providers.”

And concluded:

“Fund the student. Separate finance from provision. Let the market discipline the industry that is supposed to prepare the next generation of workers and citizens.”

Read those words again.

Separate finance from provision.

“Separate Finance From Provision.” Say What?

For the past quarter-century, Florida politicians have generally sold vouchers and school choice as additional options for families alongside traditional public schools. Competition would be the rising tide that lifted all boats.

Mack is articulating something considerably different.

Mack is questioning whether government needs to operate schools at all.

Under the system Mack describes, government’s primary role would be to finance education. Families would receive public money and become consumers. Schools and other educational organizations would become competing “providers.” Successful providers would attract customers and expand. Unsuccessful ones would lose customers and presumably disappear.

The market would provide the discipline.

Are Public Schools a “Monopoly”?

Mack also calls public education a “monopoly.”

Let’s ignore for a moment that calling Florida’s public school system a monopoly is SO2005.

Today, Florida has magnet schools, charter schools, open enrollment, virtual schools, home education and Personalized Education Programs, private schools, and universal eligibility for state-funded education scholarships—alongside traditional district-run public schools. Florida has spent the past quarter-century deliberately building one of the broadest school-choice landscapes in the country.

And Florida’s public schools themselves are hardly a monolith.

Florida has 67 school districts, each governed by an elected school board constitutionally charged with operating, controlling and supervising the free public schools within its district. Florida’s compulsory-attendance laws allow families to educate their children through public schools, religious schools, private schools, home education and other authorized arrangements.

In other words, Florida families aren’t trapped in a government-school monopoly. They already have choices. Lots of them.

But even setting all of that aside, a public school system isn’t a monopoly in the ordinary commercial sense any more than your local fire department or police department is a monopoly.

We don’t accuse the fire department of maintaining a monopoly on putting out house fires because taxpayers collectively decided to create a public institution responsible for protecting every home in the community. We don’t hand every family its share of the sheriff’s budget and tell them to shop among competing police providers. We fund these services collectively because their benefits extend beyond the individual person receiving the service—and because we have decided that everyone should be able to depend upon them.

Public education rests on much the same principle.

Yes, individual children benefit enormously from receiving an education. But so does everyone else. Businesses benefit from an educated workforce. Communities benefit from citizens who can read, reason, participate in civic life and support themselves. Democracy itself depends upon an educated citizenry—which Mack acknowledges in the very first sentence of his post.

That’s why every taxpayer supports public schools whether or not they currently have a child sitting in one.

Public schools aren’t competing businesses selling a product. They are public institutions providing a public service.

By calling that arrangement a “monopoly,” Mack quietly changes the premise of the debate. He asks us to think of education as a commercial market, schools as competing businesses, parents as consumers and children as units of revenue.

Once you accept that premise, Mack’s conclusion follows rather neatly: just give consumers the money, let providers compete for it and allow the market to sort out the winners and losers.

But we don’t have to accept the premise.

Mack is not simply arguing for allowing some children to attend private schools with public money. Florida already does that. He is suggesting something much more fundamental: a different conception of what public education itself should be.

Don’t Forget Florida’s Constitution

And there is something rather important missing from Mack’s market analysis: Florida’s Constitution.

Article IX, Section 1 doesn’t merely say Florida has an interest in having educated citizens.

It declares:

“The education of children is a fundamental value of the people of the State of Florida.”

It then establishes education as a “paramount duty of the state” and requires adequate provision for a “uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools.”

Florida law goes further, specifying that K-12 public school students are entitled to that uniform, safe, secure, efficient and high-quality system of education.

It doesn’t say give families money and let’s all hope a marketplace of educational providers produces an adequate education for our kids.

And that distinction matters.

The Public System Must Serve Every Child

Public education isn’t simply a financial transaction between government and individual families. Public schools have obligations that markets don’t necessarily impose.

The public system must have a place for every child.

The child with significant disabilities.

The child learning English.

The child whose parents don’t have the time, transportation, education or resources to navigate an increasingly complicated marketplace.

The child who lives somewhere a private provider doesn’t consider sufficiently profitable to serve.

The child who was just expelled from a private school.

The child whose charter school closes.

The child who costs considerably more to educate than the amount deposited into their education savings account.

A public education system has to be there for ALL OF THEM.

That’s the difference between purchasing an educational service and guaranteeing a public education.

Markets can certainly create incentives for innovation and efficiency. Choice can provide families with options. Neither proposition requires accepting the much larger proposition that education behaves like an ordinary marketplace—or that consumer choice can substitute for public accountability.

Children aren’t products. Schools aren’t grocery stores. And education isn’t simply another “industry” waiting for market discipline.

Education Isn’t a Toaster

There is also an accountability problem embedded in Mack’s argument.

A marketplace works only if consumers have enough information to distinguish good products from bad ones and if poor choices can be corrected without unacceptable consequences.

But a child’s education isn’t a toaster that you can return to Walmart.

If a school provides a poor education for three years before a parent realizes it, the market may eventually punish the school. That doesn’t give the child those three years back.

And Florida has made this proposed education marketplace even more peculiar by applying very different academic standards and accountability rules to different providers receiving public money.

Traditional public schools are graded. They must adhere to state academic standards. Their state- mandated test results are publicly reported. Their budgets are public record. Their board meetings are open to the public. Their records are subject to public-records laws. Their teachers and administrators operate under extensive state requirements. When schools repeatedly perform poorly, the state can and does intervene.

Private schools operate under a very different accountability structure. Florida’s own Department of Education says private schools establish their own systems of school accountability, grading, reporting and evaluation and are not included in the state’s measurement of public schools. Scholarship-participating private schools have a few additional requirements, including testing and financial-compliance provisions, but they are not subjected to the same accountability system imposed on traditional public schools.

Yet Florida increasingly sends billions of public education dollars to these private providers without imposing comparable public accountability.

That isn’t a free market.

It’s a publicly financed market in which taxpayers provide the capital, families make the purchasing decisions, private providers receive the revenue—and the public gets substantially less information about what it purchased.

We should absolutely give every child the opportunity to attend an excellent school.

But we shouldn’t confuse giving families purchasing power with guaranteeing children access to a quality public education.

Florida’s constitutional responsibility isn’t simply to make sure students have funds available to purchase a parent’s choice of education.

It is to make adequate provision for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high-quality system of free public schools—a public system that is there for every child, whether or not a private provider chooses to serve them.

That’s a very different obligation.

If taxpayers are going to fund education, taxpayers deserve accountability. If a school receives public money, the public has a legitimate interest in knowing how that money is spent, whom the school serves, what students are learning and what happens when the school fails.

And if Florida’s Commissioner of Education believes the state no longer needs to be in the business of actually providing public education, Floridians deserve to know that too.

Florida’s system of free public schools isn’t merely an “industry.”

It’s a constitutional obligation. It’s a paramount duty. It’s a fundamental value.

And it’s a public trust.

As Floridians, we all need to be paying attention.