Guest Author
The education choice landscape has been changing rapidly across the nation, and nowhere have families enjoyed as many options as in Florida.
Data from the state’s Department of Education recently revealed a historic milestone: In the 2023-24 school year, more than half of the Sunshine State’s 3.5 million K-12 students attended schools or learning environments outside their zoned neighborhood school, chosen by their parents or guardians.
They include 500,000 students receiving an education choice scholarship and nearly 400,000 enrolled in charter schools.
So, it’s only natural that two of the biggest providers of both – Step Up For Students, a nonprofit scholarship funding organization, and Charter Schools USA, the second-largest charter network in the nation – would join forces on giving scholarship families access to charter school services.
In 2023, Florida implemented a program that allowed every scholarship program to operate as an education savings account (ESA), providing families with more flexibility in how they spend their children’s education funds. The state also established the Personalized Education Program (PEP), which is available to students who are not enrolled full-time in a public or private school. In its first year, PEP funded 20,000 students, the maximum allowed by law. This academic year, the program reached its expanded cap of 60,000. PEP can grow to 100,000 in 2025-26.
With that rapid growth has come increased demand from families for diverse learning options, and with it the ability to customize their children’s education. Florida has become the leader in “a la carte learning,” where parents can select from a menu of preferences – public, private, charter, virtual, home and microschools – including creating a hybrid of each.
School districts around Florida have begun contracting with Step Up to provide classes to ESA students. CSUSA, the second-largest charter school network in the nation and with 62 public charter schools, 16 private early learning centers and two private day schools in Florida, prides itself on its innovative policies to meet the needs of individual students. For instance, it is opening a new school in Tallahassee, the Innovation Academy of Excellence, which focuses on providing AI and STEM instruction to middle schoolers.
Through its alliance with Step Up, CSUSA will now be able to offer the same classes and high-quality instruction to ESA students, regardless of their primary learning environment.
This arrangement properly prioritizes serving the student, not the system of delivery. That aligns with CSUSA’s philosophy, which has always prioritized students in every decision, from the type of furniture in every building.
Indeed, charter schools and ESAs are not competing with each other for students. ESAs merely create opportunities for educators of all stripes to fulfill demand and share in the funding. The walls between providers, public and private, are coming down, and the lines of distinction are becoming blurred.
It’s an example that other states that have recently launched ESA programs can follow.
The collaboration between Step Up and CSUSA demonstrates that in Florida, we are united in serving families in multiple ways – and others can be united in similar ways elsewhere. We may be the first, but we won’t be the last.
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Keith Jacobs, M.Ed., is the Assistant Director of Provider Development for Step Up For Students. He previously served as an assistant principal and principal of district and charter schools in Florida. Eddie Ruiz, Ed.D., is the Florida state superintendent of Charter Schools USA. He previously served as a principal at both district and charter schools, as well as an assistant superintendent in Palm Beach County Schools.
