Gov. Ron DeSantis returned to Jacksonville’s Trinity Christian Academy to talk about education policy and school choice, and argued that Florida’s school choice model should be a national template in the new Congress and presidential administration of Donald Trump.
“The Congress has an opportunity to make a difference,” DeSantis said.
“We hope that they will consider looking at Florida’s model for education choice and applying that nationally, which can be done. And you don’t need the Department of Education for this. You can do it through a tax credit program, through the tax code and through the Treasury Department and can even pass it with budget reconciliation in the U.S. Senate.”
A national approach would sidestep unions that are powerful in some places, the Governor said, unions that Florida “beat” but that reign supreme in more Democratic jurisdictions.
“If you look at some of these places like Chicago, you look at some of these places like LA, the reality is the school unions control education in those areas and they own the schools and the politicians lock, stock and barrel. So you are never going to see any type of choice through local or state legislation in those areas because they basically control the political process,” DeSantis explained.
“We beat the unions when we passed our family empowerment scholarship in 2019. We beat the unions in 2020 when we passed the universal choice. And we’ve now empowered teachers with paycheck protection, so there’s no automatic deduction of school union dues allowed in the state of Florida. You want to join, you can write a check and send it, but we’re not going to have the government facilitating joining organizations which have a partisan left agenda and put their interests ahead of the interests of students. But that’s not true in many parts of this country.”
The Governor believes “the debate about school choice” is “over.”
“Clearly, you’re better offering choice than not offering choice. And if you look at some of these places like Chicago, could you do any worse than what they’re doing? I mean, why the hell not try something (different), right?”
One bragging point he mentioned: Florida’s 89.7% graduation rate, which shows “the proof is in the pudding.”
DeSantis noted that more than 500,000 students are in scholarship programs, a new high.
And the programs work, he argued, with more charter students testing at grade level than those in traditional public schools, with “disproportionately low-income” and minority students achieving to the level of “one of the top 10 performing states in the United States of America.”
He also mentioned 155,000 homeschool students in the state, adding up to 1.5 million students in “various choice programs.” This more than triples the level of students in choice programs when he took office, DeSantis noted.
Will national leaders take Florida’s cue? That’s the open question.
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