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PODCAST: | “Freedom to Learn:” Florida’s School Choice Story

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Florida Commissioner of Education Stasi Kamoutsas on Florida’s School Choice Victories, Myths, & Lessons Learned

Education freedom continues to expand across the country. Governors in over half of the states have opted into the federal scholarship tax credit, while participation in state school choice programs continues to grow nationwide, especially in states with universal eligibility. In this episode of Freedom to Learn, Florida Commissioner of Education Anastasios “Stasi” Kamoutsas joins the podcast to discuss why Florida consistently ranks as the #1 state for education freedom and what other states can learn from its success. Our conversation covers Florida school choice history, pervasive myths, and lessons learned, as well as parental rights, the wide array of K-12 policies that are improving Florida’s academic outcomes, and Commissioner Kamoutsas’ priorities for the upcoming year.

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Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I’d love to hear how you personally define school choice or education freedom.

Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas: We fundamentally believe in the value of a parent being empowered. I talk about it all the time. I was raised by a single mother of three kids. Oftentimes in the traditional public school system in Miami-Dade County, she was overlooked, or she was tossed to the side, or her concerns as it related to my education or my brother and sister’s education were often thrown to the wayside. This is a woman who took us home from the hospital at birth, who clothed us, who bathed us, who obsessed over our futures, and made sure that she was providing us the best opportunities possible. And I get it. She wasn’t the most sophisticated. She had a high school diploma. She worked the front desk at a doctor’s office her entire life. Probably never made more than $30,000 in a year. However, she cared about us. She wanted the best educational opportunity.

We are providing parents like her, parents across the state, regardless of what they look like, regardless of their zip code, we are giving them true educational freedom by giving them full flexibility. What is the educational option that works best for their child?

• Is it a homeschool where we have seen participation double in the state of Florida over the past 10 years? And now they’re able to utilize the scholarship program as well.
• Whether it’s a charter school, where we have record numbers now, over 400,000 students are attending our charter schools.
• Whether it’s a private school, and now you have a scholarship that is allowing you, for the first time as a parent, to truly see your child’s future at a private school where you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford it. We have over 500,000 students benefiting from that.

1.4 million students in our state, a state that has 2.8 million students total, are benefiting from choice programs. And so that is true educational freedom and empowerment of parents.

Florida was a leader in introducing universal school choice, and the state leads the nation in choice participation. But that didn’t just happen. Would you be able to address the evolution, how this happened over a couple of decades?

Commissioner Kamoutsas: Yes, a lot of credit to Governor Bush. I know he had his challenges when he was pushing for the Opportunity Scholarships. He really had a vision to get to where we’re at now. Unfortunately, he had a Supreme Court that was not favorable, and there’s a famous decision, Bush v. Holmes. It’s actually still in existence right now.

After the expansion of the Family Empowerment Scholarship with this governor and the remake of the Supreme Court, we actually never drew a challenge from the teachers union to the scholarship program. In fact, I was recruited to come up here to the general counsel’s office when I lived in Miami in 2019, thinking that was going be a primary piece of litigation that I was going to undertake. It never ended up happening. The biggest lawsuit that I ended up dealing with was keeping schools open during COVID, and so many of the other fights that we’ve taken on.

But this is something that Governor Bush really had in mind as his vision. Thankfully, Governor DeSantis agreed, and he campaigned on school choice and giving all children across the board an opportunity to access a program that best fits their individualized needs. And so we passed the Family Empowerment Scholarship. It went on to full universal school choice, but year after year incrementally, there were additional benefits, there were additional expansions offered, more students being covered, and we were able to get to the point that we’re at now. And now we’re seeing that parents across the state are able to utilize every single one of these scholarships to the benefit of their children.

I was the leader of the school choice office at the Florida Department of Education when that Florida Supreme Court decision came in years ago. I wouldn’t say it was a sad day… It was an infuriating day because how can you strike down a school choice program that is designed for students in repeatedly failing schools, giving them an escape, allowing them to have an option, for those parents to have those resources? We’re not going to let that happen. These parents are not going to be robbed of their decision. These children are not going to be robbed of their futures and their opportunities. That decision, I think, fueled a lot of this significant expansion of education freedom.

And it’s been really exciting to see what’s been happening under Governor DeSantis’ leadership. In a recent State of the State address, he said, “Our universal school choice program works. Families and students have benefited, and the academic bar has been raised throughout the state.” So looks like he’s celebrating success. How do you define success when it comes to education freedom in Florida?

Commissioner Kamoutsas: I think success is multifaceted, and most importantly, we look at whether our students are performing academically. At that State of the State, the governor was able to announce the highest graduation rate in the state of Florida at 92.2%. That is the direct result of so many of these education reforms that the governor has championed, where we have put students first, where we have focused on merit, where we have focused on achievement. All students are benefiting as a result.

Our African-American students are up 3.9 percentage points from the prior year. Hispanic students are up over 2%. Students with disabilities are up over 2%. And economically disadvantaged students are up over 3%. We are not watering down the standards either. I saw a couple of articles that said that, but the reality is anybody who knows anything about Florida knows that we continue to create robust, rigorous standards. We continue to elevate our cut scores for our statewide test to ensure that students are performing better and better. And so when you elevate those cut scores, it’s actually harder for a student to demonstrate proficiency. We did that. And even though we elevated those scores, students rose to the occasion, and now we have the highest graduation rate in our state’s history. That is one of many accolades that we are able to tout as a state as it relates to increased performance.

I’m a graduate of Orange County Public Schools in Central Florida. I went to public schools from age four to 17, kindergarten to 12th grade, in a terrible time in Florida’s education history. This wasn’t inevitable, this level of success. There was a lot of work, persistence, and dedication put into elevating what students experience in all types of Florida education options.

Governor DeSantis signed House Bill 1 back in 2023, which expanded Florida’s family empowerment scholarship and related school choice programs, so students of all incomes and backgrounds can benefit. How are they finding out about their education options? Does the state help inform parents?

Commissioner Kamoutsas: I think the biggest advertisement, if you will, is Governor DeSantis hosting press conferences, constantly beating the drum about the anecdotes that we hear from parents across the state about how they’re benefiting, or their child is benefiting, from these scholarship programs. I know there’s quite a bit of media coverage that takes place when he presents that.

Obviously, at the department, we always tout our rankings as it relates to educational freedom. Last week, we were named number one again for the third year in a row by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, on education freedom. These are rankings we pride ourselves on. The Heritage Foundation, several years in a row, has also said we’re number one in educational freedom. The Parent Power Index has also said we’re number one as it relates to supporting our parents. And so these are things that we are constantly putting out there into the ether.

We’re making sure that we’re sending communications to parents. Something that was new when I took over as the Commissioner of Education is we provided parents a memo on day one, back on July 14, 2025, communicating their rights as parents. It’s not often that a state’s Commissioner of Education is empowering parents so much so that they are getting direct communication from the commissioner where they’re reminded of some of these pieces of legislation that have been championed over the years, and the power that they have as a parent to determine the best educational option for their child.

What do you think are some of the threats or challenges that await Florida in maintaining that number one status?

Commissioner Kamoutsas: Sure, well, the program’s always going to be attacked. We saw that this year, there was an audit where the program was attacked because there were scholarship students who were actually being served by the public school. And so this audit came back and said, “Florida, you can do better. You’re doing a great job, but there’s more to be done.” And we agreed. We said, we’re going to embrace this. We’re going to lean in.

We believe in accountability, and so we updated our cross-check process, made it more efficient, where we contact the district on the front end and confirm where exactly the child is going to be, so that the money is following the child, whether that’s at the traditional public school or at the private school. And so we made sure that we worked through those kinks over the summer. We created greater accountability to be able to track those dollars.

But we are not going to slow down in the flexibility that we are providing parents. We’re not going to stop encouraging mobility throughout the school year. If a child is struggling at one school and a parent thinks that there’s a better option at a different school or at a different educational program, we want those parents to feel as though that change could be made before it is too late.

You’re in a legislative session right now. Sometimes, well-meaning legislators might think, “There was an audit, there were problems, we need to fix it legislatively.” So how do you respond to that perception?

Commissioner Kamoutsas: I think the governor and his recommended budget did come up with a recommendation that could potentially help address this, and that is moving the scholarship dollars below the FEFP line. The way education is generally funded is through the FEFP, and right now, you have the same pot of money that’s funding the traditional public school as well as the choice students. If you were to separate those dollars and they don’t mix, there’s no overlap, then I think that would add to greater protection of that pot of money in addition to some of the accountability metrics that we’ve already undertaken here at the Florida Department of Education. The governor’s open to tweaking the program. He has said, and I’ve said it all the time, while we are number one in education, we don’t rest on our laurels. We continue to build year after year.

Look at our legislation as it relates to school safety. Florida leads the nation when it comes to school safety legislation and ensuring that we are protecting the health, safety, and well-being of our students. Yet, year after year, we have built on our school safety legislation to ensure that we are providing all opportunities possible to protect our students. Now we have the Guardian Program at private schools. The Guardian Program’s now at preschools. This year, the governor is recommending expanding the Guardian Program at our colleges and universities.

And so thinking outside the box, making sure that while we continue to lead, we still are able to address the needs of our students and the needs of those that are in our education system each year through legislation and not just resting because we’ve been found to be number one in almost every metric.

I’d love to know lessons from Florida’s school choice education freedom experience that you think would be relevant for other states. Florida has been a leader for these two plus decades, and particularly in the last five years or so, with this incredible expansion. Other states are hoping to catch up. Do you have advice for them?

Commissioner Kamoutsas: Yes, I think the first thing is to be unwavering in your dedication to putting students first. There’s going to be criticism. I joke with the staff that every six months, I guarantee you there’s going to be some narrative that’s going to be spun either by the media or by the teachers union. And the reality is, as long as we are focused on giving students a high-quality education, make that your North Star. If you pursue that and ignore the noise, I assure you, students will benefit.

And so you are going to see, as school choice is expanded to the point of universal school choice, we’re still dealing with it here in the state of Florida with respect to attacks on the program. The union is often saying that choice programs are to the detriment of the public school system. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Competition drives a better product. And I talked about those graduation rates, but we’re seeing the proficiency numbers are also increasing across the board. We talked about our progress monitoring results last summer, where we were at 64% A and B schools last year in the public school system. We’re now at 71%. And with charter schools, we’re at 77% A and B schools. Those numbers are huge. The fact that we’ve increased the number of students on grade level in English and math. From the inception of progress monitoring to where we’re at now, it’s about 100,000 more students who are now on grade level over the past couple of years in English and about 115,000 in math. You’re talking hundreds of thousands of students who are now benefiting as a result of progress monitoring, as a result of school choice, and creating a better product in the classroom.

You’re going to get attacks, you’re going to receive criticisms, but as long as your focus is on students first and ensuring that they’re excelling academically, and we’re providing them a safe learning environment, you’re going to see that parents across the state are going to be eternally thankful. That is where you achieve success in education policy — when you start seeing the results. And so whether it’s the graduation rates, whether it’s how students are performing in both English and mathematics, and those increases. We’re already seeing our students are performing better this year at the same time than where they were last year at the same time.

We are encouraged by those results, and we’re going to continue to put students first because of it.

You’re certainly right that the media and the teachers unions have a narrative that they drive and they drive hard. Back in my day, under Governor Bush, it was the Palm Beach Post obsessed with tackling the school choice programs from every angle. It seems like in more recent years, the Orlando Sentinel has had some version of DeSantis derangement syndrome and is really gung-ho about taking down education freedom options for families. I’m sure there are other papers across the states and, of course, there’s always the union.

Because this is a nationwide phenomenon, I often ask my guests to tackle school choice myths. You’ve been doing that throughout our conversation. Are there more that you want to tackle today?

Commissioner Kamoutsas: I am the proud product of the public education system. There are articles out there that say I trash public schools. No, I’m hard on public schools because I believe in accountability and I believe in accountability across the board. And so you’re going to see practices here at the Florida Department of Education that we have made sure to increase that.

But to say that now the public school system is going to be “defunded” or that students are going to now perform worse as a result of school choice, it’s a total myth. Both of those are total myths. We are seeing that our public school students are doing better.

The governor has continued to provide record funding for our teachers in the public school system. To this point, he’s supported nearly $6 billion in funding for teacher pay increases. This year alone, he’s recommending $1.56 billion, which is an increase of $200 million from the year before.

So just because we’re pro-school choice does not mean that we are now anti-public school. It couldn’t be farther from the truth.

And so many of these metrics that I talked about today are the reflection of the hard work of these public school teachers and the success of these public school students. So I want folks to understand, we measure ourselves in large part by how public school students perform, how these public school programs are thriving. And so we want to ensure that we are providing all educational opportunities to families across the state so that they can decide what best meets their child’s individualized needs.

Districts across the country are facing a demographic cliff. There is declining enrollment across the nation. There just weren’t as many babies born after 2008. Districts have put off decisions when it comes to adjusting their budgets and adjusting which schools are open and which ones are not, because they had a stopgap of federal supplemental funding during the COVID era. They can’t ignore that anymore. Is Florida experiencing that when it comes to the demographic cliff, or did so many people moving there offset that?

Commissioner Kamoutsas: We’ve seen it across the state where there have been decreases in enrollment, and that is a big part of why there’s been legislation championed by this governor and by our legislature to provide greater efficiencies. Co-location is a new piece of legislation being implemented in the next couple of years. Ensuring that where you have half-empty buildings, for example, how are we able to utilize that space in a manner that will benefit other students, like charter school students wanting to come in there and ensure that they’re also receiving an education. In our minds, if you’re going to fully fund a building that’s half empty, it seems like an inefficient use of the taxpayer dollars. And so we’ve created greater flexibilities even in that context so that all educational space that’s out there is able to be utilized towards the instruction of students.

When we’re talking about declining enrollment in this context, again, not as many babies have been born each year since 2008. There is a real demographic cliff out there. Opponents will blame everything on “vouchers,” but there are a number of different dynamics at play. And policymakers need to be smart and not just react to whatever the talking point that the union is putting out there. Great to hear that thoughtful policymaking is happening in Florida.

As we wrap up, I want to talk about how Florida has also been a leader in strengthening parental rights. There was the Parental Rights and Education Act signed back in 2022. The media and the unions flipped out and misrepresented what that was. I’d love for you to address what the governor’s thinking has been around parental rights and what the state has been doing on that front.

Commissioner Kamoutsas: I appreciate the governor making sure that he is a voice for those who are often overlooked. I talked about my mother being the low-income single mom of three kids who was fighting for her children to have the best educational opportunities, but she’s one of so many. And it was a popular movement when we created greater protections for parents to be fully informed about what was going on in schools.

During COVID, even Florida was impacted. That last month and a half of school, all the districts had switched to remote learning to finish out the school year and parents were able to hear for the first time what their students were being taught, what the teachers were saying in the classroom, things that oftentimes were brought to our attention as parents thinking it was inappropriate for a child to be exposed to. And so a lot of the legislation that has been passed has been to provide parents insight and transparency into what’s going on in the classroom, requiring parental consent for all kinds of sensitive areas that a parent would want to not just be informed on, but have to make the final decision on, as it relates to what their child is being exposed to. And so that legislation proved to be monumental.

The legislation turned the tables a little bit and said, “As a parent, I don’t have to be just told on the back end what you’ve been doing with my child. I get to know on the front end what exactly my child is being exposed to. And I have the ability to make a decision on whether or not I want my child to be exposed to that, or do I want my child to receive the traditional public instruction, versus a charter instruction…” We’re seeing a growing movement now with classical schools. That’s very popular with our parents, and because of the legislation championed by this governor and by this legislature, parents are able to utilize and explore that option and provide that opportunity for their children. And so you’re seeing now more than ever parents in the state of Florida feel not just like they’re being heard, but they are empowered to make sure that they are fully decision-makers on how their children are going to learn in the state. And that’s a really good.

The commissioner of education position in Florida is an appointed position. You have another year in office. So, final question, what are your priorities for the rest of this year?

Commissioner Kamoutsas: What I said from day one: academic excellence and student safety. We will not rest on our laurels. We are doing a great job, as reflected by so many of the metrics out there. But I think we can do better. I think we can continue to see our students excel academically and continue to come up with ways to provide greater math interventions, to be able to capture where the student is struggling earlier and earlier on, and to be able to help them get on the right track.

That was a big part of the push with progress monitoring. And so, as we continue to implement the progress monitoring program — it’s only been around for a couple of years — I think we’re going to see greater and greater efficiencies, creating a conducive learning environment where, yes, we are very pro-parent, but we are also very pro-teacher. And we want the parent and the teacher to be on the same page, working together, so that the child is succeeding academically. It doesn’t need to be a combative relationship. We want to foster one where they’re working together, and we’re encouraging more communication between parents and teachers. Teachers do a great job from bell-to-bell, and then the parents get the child and have to work with their child on what they’ve learned during the school day, and we want to make sure that those practices and that instruction are being reinforced in the household.

We want to make sure that we are building on our school safety legislation. We’ve done a great job from pre-K to 12th grade, but I think there’s more we can do in higher education. Obviously, many of us were impacted by the shooting that took place at Florida State University last year. And so we want to make sure that we are providing a safe learning environment for our post-secondary students as well. And so we’re committed to achieving that this legislative session.

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