Home schooling is booming in Florida, thanks to vouchers paid for with tax dollars. Governor DeSantis was recently a keynote speaker at the state homeschooling association, and he said that Florida is now the nation’s leading state for homeschooling. He said, “When you think about education and your kids, as a parent, the kids are in many ways an open book. And do you want to turn them over for eight hours a day to some indoctrination factory? Of course not. And so you want to be able to have choice to be able to direct the education and upbringing of your kids.” Ten years ago, 77,000 children were homeschooled. Today the number is 155,000.
Homeschooling families receive vouchers of $7,000-$9,000 for education expenses. However, some parents have used the voucher to pay for trampolines, swim goggles, snorkels, masks, fins, skateboards, and for televisions up to 55 inches and admission to theme parks.
I assume some parents are qualified to teach their children at home. I’ve met a few. But I also assume that even more parents are totally unqualified to teach their children at home. I fear that the increase in the number of children taught at home will result in a larger pool of poorly educated, ignorant Americans, whose education leaves them unprepared for the 21st century. Unlike DeSantis, who went to Florida’s public schools, before going to Harvard and Yale Law School, the state’s home-schooled children will not be taught by certified teachers of history, science, mathematics, and literature, nor will they have access to advanced courses. They will learn what their parents know. They will avoid the strict accountability that the state considers essential for public schools. Their parents, if they have three children, will get nearly $30,000 from the state, and be free to immerse their children in ideological, political or religious zealotry or to teach them total nonsense. This is insane.
The Orlando Sentinel reported:
TALLAHASSEE — A state voucher program that began in the 2023-2024 school year is on pace to at least double as applications roll in from families who teach their children at home in search of funds to make a range of purchases.
What’s known as the Personalized Education Program provides voucher money to students not enrolled full-time at public or private schools. The program was established through a 2023 law (HB 1) that massively expanded the state’s voucher programs…
The law allowed for the Personalized Education Program to provide vouchers for 20,000 students in its inaugural year, and the program almost hit its cap, with vouchers for 19,514 students funded.
It’s allowed to grow by 40,000 students a year under the law, meaning the maximum capacity would grow in the 2024-2025 school year to 60,000 students.
As of late last week, 39,690 applications had been submitted for the coming school year, and 31,991 vouchers had been awarded, with months to go for applications to come in, potentially increasing the number toward the maximum of 60,000.
As the homeschool vouchers increase year by year, in time there will be even more homeschooled students, and the state will pay out more than a billion dollars annually.
A side note: last fall, I visited Germany. I learned that homeschooling is banned there. In our society, teachers must pass exams to demonstrate their competence, but parents who homeschool do not. We subsidize the cultivation of ignorance. Florida leads the way.
You can count on Florida for reckless and unregulated policies. I have seen some of the home school children running up and down the aisles and careening into shopping carts at Aldi’s. My thought is that they would be better off in public school. Here in DeSantis’ “free state” of Florida, we cultivate ignorance and expect the public to pay for it.
While I am a supporter of public education and understand the concern about wasted taxpayer funds. I would also highlight that we all know of plenty of school district officials that waste public funds. I live in Florida and am disgusted by many of the changes DeSantis has made, however, I do know some very competent and amazing parents that home school their children. I have been having more conversations with them as I learn more about this facet of education. For some, it is the answer they are seeking related to the issues that they want their children to be made aware of at a young age. For others, they simply could not receive the special services needed from public or private schools. Our current system of public education is not working for all children. It is full of bureaucracy, waste and is usually run by white men of a certain age. I wonder what we can learn from homeschoolers and other forms of education? Perhaps somewhere in the middle is a better course of action for all. I am a certified teacher with a Ph.D. In Educational Leasership. Just like all things in life, there are “bad apples” in every profession. While I think educators need support, guidance and collaboration to be successful, a teaching certificate does not guarantee an excellent teacher. Life is not black and white, it does not have to be an either or. We can learn so much from each other by breaking down walls and listening and learning from each other.
Respectfully,
Dr. Maria Hersey
One of my big concerns is the lack of socialization with other students and the rest of the real world. Home school students spend most of their time at home with little or no socialization with “other” students. By “other” I mean students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged, those students that may have discipline problems, students whose parents may have political leanings that are different from the home schools’ parents, students of color, different religions, etc., etc. Yes, I know that there are home school families that get together to do activities but these activities are just for home school students, which limits the scope of involvement with the “other” students.
I often wonder how emotionally and psychologically all home students are when it comes to dealing with the real world outside the their home. Students who attend public schools have to deal with the real world, which helps to prepare them for them when they have to step out on their own and survive hardships of life.
It concerns me when the parent of a home school comes to a high school principal and states that his/her child wants to be on one of the sports teams or participate in other activities in the school. They do not want their child to attend the school academically or associate with other students or for some other reason yet they want their child to participate in school activities.
DeSantis’ claim that “FL is now the nation’s leading state for homeschooling” is based simply on numbers, not %s. Not hard to be “leading” when you have over 3 million school-aged children. The leader, hands down, is Alaska, with 6% homeschooled. Plus 7 other states with higher than FL’s 2%.
In 2001, when I was first starting as a free-lance visiting Span/ Fr teacher to regional PreK’s [north central NJ], I visited our local homeschooling enterprise for a look-see. I was pleasantly surprised. It was a network of families from towns within about a 25-min drive. A mixed group of maybe 40 kids, roughly 2nd – 8th grade age. It was a nice day; teaching activities were outdoors, hosted by a local family with large back porch and property. About 6 parents in attendance teaching/ assisting. Various groupings of kids learning different things around long tables or large picnic blankets. It was explained to me that subjects were taught by parents with specialties in those fields, several of whom had prior teaching experience in public or private schools. The kids appeared to be happy and busy. A nice experiment, I decided. Purely voluntary, and unsupported by any school tax money.
From what I’ve read/ remember, what I observed was probably a weekly or perhaps twice-weekly gathering that supplemented at-home learning. The group no longer exists in my locale– presumably because rising home prices [& RE taxes] mean there are far fewer SAH parents than there were around here 23 years ago.