The number of students in Florida’s three K-12 private school choice programs continues to grow.
Last school year, the state became the first in the country to serve more than 100,000 students with special needs vouchers, tax credit scholarships, and its new education savings account program for special needs students.
The first numbers for the 2015-16 school year, released this week by the Florida Department of Education, show thousands more students are participating.
More than 77,000 low-income students are receiving tax credit scholarships, a roughly 10 percent increase from last school year. More than 28,000 special-needs students are using McKay scholarships to attend private schools. Nearly 3,900 students have Personal Learning Scholarship Accounts (PLSAs).
Step Up for Students, which hosts this blog and employs the authors of this post, helps administer the tax credit and PLSA programs.
The state releases quarterly reports on the two largest private school choice programs, and the numbers tend to fluctuate throughout the year.
The fall numbers suggest personal learning accounts may not be cannibalizing the McKay scholarship program. This fall, the state reports more than 28,000 students using the special-needs vouchers. That’s less than the number served by the end of last school year (more than 30,000) but more than the program had at this time last year (just shy of 26,500).
The total number of participating students tends to increase as the year goes on. Parents can sign up for PLSAs, for example, throughout the school year.
Florida has a fourth private-school choice program in the realm of early learning. Voluntary Prekindergarten is among the state’s most widely used scholarship programs.
