School choice helps traditional public schools, too!

It’s National School Choice Week, and other states that have already enacted school choice programs like charter schools and student scholarships funded by either tax supported vouchers or non-tax supported private contributions are going to have some interesting results to discuss.

Critics of school choice constantly assert that offering parents educational opportunities harms traditional public schools.

Really?

Let’s look at what happened in the school choice powerhouse state of Florida from a time well before any such options existed in America until the most recent, 2022 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Figure 1 tells the story for white students.

Figure 1

There are two sections in Figure 1. The top section shows how white students in Florida’s traditional public school system compared to their racial counterparts in other states and the District of Columbia schools back in 1992. That was the first year state-level NAEP Grade 4 Reading was tested and well before school choice options began in Florida.

In 1992, 21 states (shaded in dark blue), statistically significantly outperformed Florida’s whites in NAEP Grade 4 Reading. Another 20 states including Kentucky (shaded in medium blue) statistically tied Florida. No state had statistically significantly lower white scores (Note that District of Columbia Schools – DC, Department of Defense Schools – DS and Puerto Rico – PR are not included in these statistics though the map format shows circles for these jurisdictions).

Now, check out the bottom half of Figure 1, which shows a dramatic change regarding how white students around the country compared to Florida’s whites in 2022.

Following the massive introduction and growth of school choice in Florida, the Sunshine State’s traditional public school students now statistically significantly outscore whites in 37 other states (those shown in light blue), including Kentucky.

Even more notable, no other state statistically significantly outperformed Florida for white student scores in 2022, either.

Also note that along the way Florida moved ahead of choice-devoid Kentucky, as well — a truly remarkable improvement in performance.

Figure 2 tells the story for Black students, the only major racial minority that had NAEP results in Kentucky in 1992.

Figure 2

In 1992, Blacks in Florida’s traditional public schools were outscored by their racial counterparts in 16 other states. No state had statistically lower scores for their Black students than Florida did.

Flash forward to 2022, and another shocker of performance improvement is evident. Now, no state has statistically significantly higher scores for Blacks than Florida and 16 states have statistically significantly lower scores. 

So, evidence from Florida indicates that often-heard noise about how school choice hurts traditional public schools is basically – just noise. In the real-world example of school choice rich Florida, traditional public schools also improved, notably.

 Tech Note: Maps generated using the NAEP Data Explorer.