(The Center Square) – For the third year in a row, Florida has topped the Heritage Foundation’s Education Freedom Report Card.
The annual scorecard ranks the states for their educational freedom. The scorecard graded the states on four measures: Education choice, transparency, teacher freedom, and return on investment.
Heritage also ranked Florida first for education transparency. Lawmakers have passed bills that protect both parental and teacher rights while rejecting critical race theory. The report also praised a law that allows parents and taxpayers to review classroom assignments before educators can use them with students.
Florida ranked second nationally for school choice after lawmakers passed one of the largest expansions of school choice in the nation, House Bill 1, in 2023. The report also praised the state for respecting “the autonomy of homeschooling families.”
This past session, the lawmakers passed HB1403 to provide some reforms for the state’s school choice programs. The new law revised both contributions and provisions for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program, the Hope Scholarship Program, virtual instruction program providers, private school requirements, and students in personalized learning programs.
The Sunshine State was second in teacher freedom and the report’s authors praised the state’s full reciprocity of teacher licensure, the lack of a requirement for educators to take the Praxis teacher certification test, and the state not requiring Common Core-aligned tests.
“Despite its number one rank, the Sunshine State has some room for improvement,” the report read. “Fifty-one percent of its school districts with more than 15,000 students employ a ‘chief diversity officer.’ Florida can demonstrate even more leadership in teacher freedom by limiting growth in nonteaching staff, such as chief diversity officers, and continuing to embrace alternative routes for teachers to the K–12 classroom, or by ending certification requirements altogether.”
Florida finished eighth in return on investment. According to the scorecard, the Sunshine State spends the third-least per student at $12,108, but is tied with Colorado and Idaho for ninth place with its combined fourth-grade and eighth-grade math and reading average National Assessment of Educational Progress scores. The report says Florida can improve this score by limiting growth in nonteaching positions (1.98 teachers for every nonteacher in its public schools) and lower its unfunded teacher pension liabilities, which represent 2.9% of the state’s gross domestic product.