Does school choice hurt traditional public schools? What comparing Kentucky to Florida tells us

Kentuckians have heard it again and again: Opponents of school choice keep saying that giving parents of low-to-modest means more say about their children’s education – such as providing public charter schools and private school tuition support programs – will take money away from traditional public schools. The result, moan those choice opponents will be a tragedy for those traditional public schools.

The school choice scare tactics sound so convincing and common sense. But, are these dangers real or just political noise on the part of people who care more about adult interests in maintaining a virtual monopoly for those traditional schools than about the best needs of Kentucky’s students?

To explore this important question of choice causing possible harm to traditional public schools, the Bluegrass Institute has just completed a study, “Florida Versus Kentucky: School Choice Improves Public School Performance, Too,” that might almost be considered a real, split-sample investigation.

The new study examines how public school performance over time in Florida, a state with a lot of school choice, compares to the performance of public schools in a state which offers low-to-modest-income parents virtually no school choice – namely, Kentucky.

The results are not even close to what the school choice opponents think.

Despite having introduced a massive number of school choice options, public schools in the Sunshine State have most definitely not lagged behind Kentucky’s public schools. In fact, as the report’s analysis of scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows, Florida’s public schools have made rather astonishing progress, generally moving from behind to ahead of Kentucky’s choice-poor public school system along the way.

Even more astonishing, Florida made all this public school progress despite a large increase in its minority student population, a situation that many would expect to lead to worse, not better, performance than Kentucky, which has experienced far less shifting in its student demographics.

But, most astonishing of all, Florida actually made more progress than Kentucky in its public schools while spending far less over time than Kentucky has. That could be because the competitive forces created by school choice pushed Florida’s traditional public schools to rise to the challenge and figure out how to do things more efficiently.

That increase in efficiency is explored in Table 3 in the report, which is shown here as well.

Table 3 provides some “Bang for the Buck” analyses.

The table compares the number of NAEP Scale Score Points each state earned in Grade 4 NAEP Reading and Grade 4 NAEP Math in 1992 and 2019 to the closest available revenue per pupil data available in federal reports (which is for 2017-2018).

For example, references listed in the report show that in 1992 NAEP Reading, Florida’s public school system only scored 208 NAEP Scale Score points while Kentucky scored 213. In the same year, Florida collected revenue of $5,674 per pupil, which converts to $10,198 in constant 2018 dollars. Kentucky, in contrast, only collected per pupil revenue of $4,635 in 1992, which is $8,331 in constant 2018 dollars.

Combining the score and revenue figures together, in 1992 Florida’s public schools only got 20.4 NAEP Reading Scale Score Points for every $1,000 of constant 2018 dollars collected while Kentucky was actually much more efficient, achieving 25.6 NAEP Reading Scale Score Points for each $1,000 of per pupil revenue.

But, things changed very notably by 2019. Kentucky’s NAEP Reading Scale Score only increased from 213 to 221 while Florida’s shot up from 208 to 225, moving from behind to ahead of Kentucky in the process. However, while Kentucky’s per pupil education revenue in constant 2018 dollars grew from $8,331 to $12,444, Florida’s public school revenue only increased from $10,198 per pupil to $10,715.

As a result, while Florida moved ahead of Kentucky for NAEP scores in Grade 4 Reading, it moved from spending over $1,800 more than Kentucky in constant 2018 dollars to spending over $1,700 less.

And, as of the latest data available, Florida’s bang for the buck in NAEP Grade 4 Reading has improved from 20.4 to 21.0 while Kentucky’s seriously decayed from 25.6 to only 17.8.

And, all the while, Florida moved from behind to ahead of the Bluegrass State for NAEP scores despite spending a lot less.

There is a whole lot more in our new report, which generally debunks the doom and gloom prophesies of the school choice opponents. If you care about doing a better job for Kentucky’s children, spend a few moments to check it out.