Step Up For Students, the nonprofit group that administers the Florida education choice scholarship programs, is highlighting the 25th anniversary of Florida’s landmark education choice scholarship program.
The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC) went into effect July 1, 2001, after it was passed by the Florida Legislature and Gov. Jeb Bush signed it into law. The program gave corporations credit for redirecting their state tax obligations to help low-income families send their children to the private schools of their choice.
In its first year, the FTC funded scholarships for 15,585 students. Today, Florida is the national leader in education choice, with over 540,000 students using one of four K-12 choice scholarships administered by Step Up For Students, the largest non-profit scholarship funding organization in the nation. Since its inception in 2002, Step Up has administered more than 3 million scholarships.
This year, 164 Step Up donors contributed over $656 million to the FTC program. All told, 750 donors have contributed $9.2 billion over the last quarter century.
“It has been an honor of a lifetime to work with thousands of dedicated people who helped Florida move to a new definition of public education: low-income parents, educators, civil rights leaders and legislators. They all played critical roles,” said John Kirtley, founder and chairman of Step Up For Students. “Under this new definition, we empower Florida families to choose, or even create, the educational experience that will maximize their children’s chances for success.”
Since 2023, every program has operated as an education savings account (ESA), giving families flexibility in how they spend their children’s funds. They can use them not only to pay for tuition and fees at private schools, but also for textbooks, curriculum, digital materials, tutoring, therapies, and other approved educational expenses for home education or other learning environments.
As a result, more than 150,000 students on a Step Up scholarship are not enrolled full time in a private or public school and are choosing learning options in an “a la carte” fashion. This has created a burgeoning education marketplace of providers and innovators to meet families’ needs. Step Up has over 160 product vendors on its MyScholarShop online platform, offering over 80,000 educational products, 7,500 businesses (not counting private schools), and 19,000 individual service providers.
“We are thrilled to have set the national standard in offering families the diverse learning options they deserve,” said Gretchen Schoenhaar, CEO of Step Up For Students. “We continue to innovate in technology and refine our processes that define the customer experience, encourage more providers to enter the marketplace and transform education.”
More than half of the state’s K-12 students – nearly 1.9 million – use an education option of their parents’ or guardians’ choosing other than their assigned district school. That includes magnet schools and career academies, charter schools, private schools, home education, and hybrid options, such as part-time microschools and co-ops. Plus, 52 of Florida’s 67 school districts have partnered with Step Up to offer fee-based classes and services to home education students on choice scholarships, paid for with scholarship funds – the only state to provide that.
Beginning in 2027, the Step Up Step Further Scholarship Fund plans to administer the new federal Education Freedom Tax Credit Program. Individual taxpayers will receive a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of up to $1,700 when they donate to a Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO) of their choice. The scholarships will provide eligible K-12 families in both public and private schools with additional resources for tuition, tutoring, technology, and educational resources.
