Peter Schorsch
Some 41,000 students and their families awarded school choice scholarships in the most recently concluded school year didn’t use them, according to a new analysis by Step Up for Students, the state’s primary choice scholarship provider.
The report is called “Going with Plan B: Why thousands of Florida parents didn’t use their school choice scholarships.” The group wanted to know why families would opt not to use about $8,000 awarded to them to send their child to a private school, so they set out to find out with a survey of parents whose children received the unused scholarships.
Only 2,739 families responded, but their responses were telling.
Nearly 35% of respondents said there were no available seats at the school they had hoped to send their children. That was the most cited reason for leaving scholarship funds on the table.
The next most prevalent responses — at about 20% each — were that the scholarship amount wasn’t enough to cover tuition and fees at their preferred institution, or that there were other financial concerns, such as uncovered expenses related to private school attendance. The cost of transportation, for instance, is often a factor as private schools don’t always offer busing opportunities for students.
While at first glance that might seem like data supporting arguments against school choice programs, and the newly implemented universal school vouchers, a closer look reveals quite the opposite. The desire for private school is robust, but despite 31% growth in the number of private schools in Florida over the past decade, there still aren’t enough to meet demand.
And the revelations about cost concerns punctuate what many school choice proponents have been saying for years: that even with help, private school can still be out of reach for low-income children and their families.
While scholarships worth about $10,000 are available to students with disabilities, there is no such increased allowance for those disadvantaged by poverty.
Survey respondents who had indicated a financial barrier — despite the scholarship award — were pressed further on their reasons for leaving funding on the table.
Most (nearly 33%) indicated they would need between $2,000 and $5,000 more to fully cover all costs associated with sending their child to a private school. Further punctuating the financial divide, more than 25% of families said the funding fell $5,000-$10,000 short of covering costs for the school year, while nearly 14% said they would need more than $10,000 to fully cover costs.
Critics of school choice programs have argued that many private schools raised tuition knowing that families whose children already attended their institutions would be getting a boost from the state. Step Up for Students’ own data shows that 69% of new students to the state’s voucher programs in the 2022-23 school year had already been enrolled in private schools.
But various studies suggest tuition increases at K-12 private schools are on the rise across the country, not just in Florida or other states with voucher programs.
Step Up for Students’ latest analysis cites the Foundation for Excellence in Education, which in a 2025 analysis tied tuition increases to inflation, not expanded choice. And the Heritage Foundation in 2023 found there were actually bigger tuition hikes in states without school voucher programs.
And the latest data isn’t just about private schools. Among those who left scholarship funding for private school on the table, more than a third (36.5%) still switched school types, such as moving from a traditional public school to a charter school or magnet program. And among those, more were happy with the shift than not (20.4% to 10.5%).
Despite more families being satisfied with what essentially turned out to be their plan B, most are still hoping to make the switch to private school in future years, with two-thirds saying they will apply for a choice scholarship again, including more than 55% of those who said they were happy with their non-private school switch.
The white paper from the Step Up for Students parent survey includes several possible recommendations for future updates to the state’s choice programs, including updates to zoning and building codes — or even just help navigating them — to help private schools and other education providers build new facilities to accommodate additional demand.
Additionally, the white paper suggests possible incentives for repurposing unused or underused public school facilities to support various choice programs.
To address under-utilization of scholarship awards among low-income families, the white paper posits increasing scholarship values for families at certain income levels so they can better access private education, as well as expanding the state’s existing $750 transportation stipend for families in public K-8 schools to other choice parents in need of transportation services.
Likewise, the analysis suggests creating a state-funded grant program to encourage alternative transportation modes to benefit choice families.
