Heritage Foundation Ranks Florida and Arizona as Tops for "Education Freedom"
According to a report released by the Heritage Foundation, Florida has topped all the states in "Education Freedom." By contrast, states like New York and New Jersey were at the bottom.
Entitled the Education Freedom Report Card, the report assessed states in four broad categories: Education Choice; Regulatory Freedom; Transparency; and Return on Investment for Education Spending.
Among those categories, the Education Freedom Report Card heavily emphasized the Education Savings Account (ESA) program adopted by Florida in 2014, especially in the classification of Education Choice.
Education Savings Accounts constitute a form of school vouchers, allowing parents to deploy state funding towards a range of educational expenses, from paying for private schools or tutoring to ballet or swimming lessons.
Writing for Salon, Kathryn Joyce reported, "the list's top 20 states are mostly deep ‘red’ and its bottom 10 are almost all dark ‘blue.’ Such ranking, Joyce writes, “might come as a surprise to education watchers who are familiar with more traditional assessments of education performance."
In the report, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, rationalizes such expansive education choice, stating that Florida allows parents to choose among various schools, including private and charter schools, is home to a strong ESA program, and rejects Critical Race Theory.
In celebrating the number one position on Twitter, the Florida Department of Education boasted, "Our guiding principle is to put students first. In Florida, students have access to a world-class education & parental rights are respected. We are proud to be recognized as the top-ranked state on the inaugural Education Freedom Report Card."
According to the President of the Florida Education Association, Andrew Spar, the state is not funding its students, and this report celebrates it. Spar adds, "In their report, it seems like the states that fund their students at a higher level have a worse ranking than those who invest less in their children.”
In her article for Salon, Joyce wrote: “What's especially noteworthy about this report — which Heritage says it will release on an annual basis — is how closely most of its ranking criteria track with the right's broader education agenda. Over the last few months, almost all the issues addressed in this report have been highlighted as key action items for conservative education reformers, from the promotion of ESAs, as a preferred pathway to universal school vouchers, to alternative teacher credentialing to the expansion of the anti-CRT movement, which now encompasses anything related to ‘diversity, equity and inclusion.’”
Joyce added: “In late June, Arizona passed a sweeping expansion of its own ESA policies, instantly creating the most wide-reaching school privatization plan in the country and sparking immediate calls for other Republican-led states to follow suit. (Although Florida ranked first overall in Heritage's report, the authors note with evident enthusiasm that Arizona's new ESA law will ‘certainly give Florida a run for its money next year.’)”
Joyce continued: “Individually and together, these education "reform" proposals tie back to larger calls to privatize education — which is sometimes acknowledged out loud, as when [Christopher] Rufo declared this April that increased controversy around public schools would help create the environment for ‘universal school choice.’ The Heritage report is part of a similar long game, declaring in its opening paragraphs that ‘America has never been closer than it is today to realizing Milton Friedman's vision for universal education choice.’”
Drawing on an interview with Carol Burris, executive director for the Network for Public Education, Joyce set Friedman’s argument against criticism from advocates of public education: "Friedman may have been an accomplished number-cruncher, but when it came to social issues, he was a crackpot," said Burris to Joyce. "He presented no evidence, just claims based on his disdain for any government regulation…. The jury is in. School choice in the form of charters and vouchers has not delivered on any of his promises; in fact, all evidence shows they have made segregation worse."
- S. Karn