Florida’s Expanded School Choice Defies Doomsday Predictions as Tens of Thousands of Students Enroll

When Florida Republicans moved to drastically expand the state’s school-choice programs earlier this year, progressives predicted nothing less than the destruction of the state’s public-education system. By lifting income requirements and taking other steps to ensure Floridians had more control over the education of their children, Republicans would cannibalize public-education funding and destroy the futures of impoverished Floridians, progressive activists and lawmakers allied to the teachers’ unions argued.

Just a couple of months into the new school year, proponents of the expanded choice programs say reality bears little resemblance to those ominous predictions.