Politics
William Mattox: Cranking it to 11
A new study by scholar Patrick Graff of the American Federation for Children (AFC) finds that Florida’s school choice scholarship programs are a lot like the guitar amps Spinal Tap made famous. They crank to 11!
Graff measured the cost-effectiveness of dollars spent on Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship program with those spent in Florida’s public school system over a 15-year period. He found the academic achievement gains of scholarship students “were at least 11 times larger than what the best research predicts those same dollars would have produced if spent on increasing K-12 public education funding directly instead.”
Holy smokes. That’s quite a difference.
Now, there may be “Stranger Things” in the academic research world than a factor of “Eleven.” But Graff’s research certainly helps explain the exploding popularity of Florida’s scholarship programs.
Currently, more than 500,000 Florida students are enrolled in Florida’s K-12 scholarship programs. Applications for the 2026-27 school year are running 12% ahead of last year’s scholarship applications. And a new poll commissioned by The James Madison Institute finds that only one in four Florida families (26%) would prefer to send their child to their zoned public school over any other possible option.
Sadly, many parents are having difficulty finding available slots at their top school of choice because the supply of private schools is not keeping up with demand. In fact, 41,000 Florida families applied for and were awarded K-12 scholarships for the 2025-26 school year – that they then chose not to use (primarily because of this supply shortage).
In a new JMI poll, 68% of all Floridians expressed support for “lifting government regulations so that more startup schools can open to meet the growing demand for K-12 education options.” Only 18% opposed this idea.
Thankfully, a measure currently making its way through the Florida Legislature would address this concern. It would free schools with fewer than 150 students from onerous zoning and land use restrictions that have often tripped up education entrepreneurs in the past.
Given the growing demand for school choice scholarship programs – and the remarkable success of these programs as found in the Graff study – Floridians ought to hope this measure, which eases the regulation of small schools, will be adopted. Indeed, for Florida to remain America’s leader in education freedom, we will need to continually innovate – and to facilitate the rise of new K-12 education enterprises.
Put another way, for Florida to remain America’s leader in education freedom, we will need to keep cranking our school choice scholarship programs to 11.
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William Mattox is the senior director of the J. Stanley Marshall Center for Education Freedom at The James Madison Institute.