For more than twenty-five years, Florida has been ground zero for school choice expansion. Among the many options for families are charter schools, private schools, tax-credit programs, microschools, ESAs, vouchers for students with special needs, homeschooling, and more. This diverse landscape makes the Sunshine State a perfect laboratory for analyzing what works—and what doesn’t—in the realm of school choice. A new report looks at a thorny issue specific to vouchers: why tens of thousands of Florida families who applied for and received private school scholarships ended up not using them.
In 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis removed the previous income-based eligibility limits on the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options, making both private-school tuition-support programs available to every K–12 student in the state. Caps on the number of available scholarships were also eliminated. This resulted in a surge of applications, awardees, and users—to the tune of a 70 percent increase in usage in two years. That usage would have been even higher, but 41,000 families that applied for and were awarded scholarships for their children from these two programs did not ultimately use them. Step Up for Students, a Scholarship Funding Organization approved by the Florida Department of Education to administer the various scholarship programs available to residents, wanted to know why. Researchers Ron Matus and Dava Cherry emailed over 32,000 of these families in January and February of 2025. Using reminders and a drawing for ten $100 gift cards as incentives, they eventually received 2,739 completed surveys.
Approximately 40 percent of survey respondents’ children were Hispanic, approximately 31 percent were White, and 23.5 percent were Black. Thus, survey respondents were more likely to be Black and Hispanic, and less likely to be White, than families who received and actually used their scholarships. Survey respondents were also less likely to be in the highest income tier and more likely not to have reported their incomes than the families who used the scholarships. However, 40 percent of respondents who did report incomes were below 185 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines. Interestingly, a majority of survey respondents (50.3 percent) reported a bachelor’s degree or above as their highest level of educational attainment, followed by some college but no degree (14.5) and associate-level degrees (14.3). Less than 3 percent of respondents indicated they had an education level below high school graduation. Survey respondents with multiple children indicated using a variety of school types, with zoned or assigned public schools the single largest category (36.9 percent), followed by private schools (25.2) and charter schools (13.3). Fifty-five percent of respondents said they were somewhat satisfied or very satisfied with their child’s school at the time they applied for the scholarship, while 30.2 percent were somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied.
Despite the fact that they ultimately didn’t use their awards, the vast majority of respondents indicated a strong desire for those scholarships, and Black and Hispanic parents were likelier to say the scholarship was very important to them (94.3 percent) than White parents (77.6). Higher income parents, with a similar spread, were more likely to say the scholarship was very important to them than their lower-income counterparts. Specifically, a desire for more individual attention and smaller class sizes was the most-commonly-cited reason for applying for the private school scholarships, with Black parents and low-income parents being the most motivated by this factor.
So why didn’t these relatively well educated and motivated families use the scholarships they applied for? Just over a third of respondents (34.7 percent) said there were no available seats at the private school they wanted, and 19.7 percent said the scholarship amount—both programs provide an average of $8,000 per year—wasn’t enough to cover tuition at their desired school. Another 19.6 percent were specifically concerned about affording additional fees beyond tuition. Just under 10 percent cited lack of transportation to and from school, and 5.8 percent said the school they were interested in was too far away to be practical for them every day, with or without transportation provided.
A third of parents (36.5 percent) who didn’t use their scholarships ended up switching school types anyway (such as moving from a traditional district school to a charter). Destinations included brick-and-mortar charters, virtual schools, and open-enrollment district schools. And those who moved were twice as likely to express satisfaction (20.4 percent) with their new school than to express dissatisfaction (10.5), regardless of destination. Two-thirds of respondents said they’d apply for the scholarships again, including 63 percent of those who switched school types and 55.5 percent of those who were satisfied after doing so.
Overall, two things seem to be going on. First, universal eligibility with no caps incited a sort of widespread “speculation” among families looking for a different choice, and many applied without a concrete plan as to how their scholarships could or would be used. Since Florida does not require scholarships to be used once awarded, families were free to choose other options that they determined were a better fit without any sort of penalty.
Second, the longstanding barriers to voucher usage that have been commonly associated with choice programs in various states—lack of open seats, finding reliable transportation, and affording out-of-pocket expenses—are still present in Florida, and universal eligibility does not alleviate them. The only element that has changed in Florida is that folks who would normally be deterred from applying by these roadblocks are emboldened by open eligibility and no enrollment caps to try their luck anyway. Eligibility for future years is not impacted by failing to use an award, but families do have to apply again in future years, which 66.7 percent of survey respondents indicated they would do. Thus, while many families were able to capitalize on the new, unlimited eligibility model, that model was still not robust enough for tens of thousands of other families still dissuaded by the same old troubles voucher families have faced since their inception.
SOURCE: Ron Matus and Dava Cherry, “Going with Plan B: Why thousands of Florida parents didn’t use their school choice scholarships,” Step Up for Students (July 2025).
