Florida finds more ways to force public schools into a free market ystem. Sue Kingery Woltanski explains how it works. Reposted by permission.
How Step Up for Students is recruiting school boards into the unbundling of public schools
Florida’s public schools stand at the edge of a profound and largely unrecognized danger. Step Up for Students, the state’s powerful voucher organization, is no longer content with diverting funds to private and homeschool programs. Now, they are actively recruiting elected school boards to join their new “education marketplace”—a system designed to dismantle public schools and sell their programs off piece by piece. And the Florida School Boards Association is helping spread the word.
This is not innovation. This is not opportunity—it is privatization by another name. It’s about turning public education into a competitive vendor system where families are customers and schools are no longer community institutions but market providers. The rhetoric of “customization” hides the real danger: the loss of coherence in children’s education, the erosion of democratic oversight, and the hollowing out of the very system meant to serve every child.
What’s at stake is nothing less than the future of public education. School boards now face a stark choice: defend the system they were elected to protect—or help dismantle it, piece by piece.
In A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door (2020), Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider warned that Florida was poised to dismantle its system of free, universal, taxpayer-funded public schools. They cited Governor Ron DeSantis’s early declaration that, “If the taxpayer is paying for the education, it’s public education,” whether funds went to a district school, charter, homeschooler, or private religious school. With a Republican-dominated legislature and a conservative Supreme Court ready to brush aside constitutional objections, Florida appeared set to break public education apart.
In a chapter titled “Education à la carte,” Berkshire and Schneider described how privatization advocates use “personalization” and “customization” as cover for dismantling public schools. Like a vulture capitalist stripping distressed companies for parts, proponents of “unbundling” seek to break schools into pieces and sell them in an education marketplace.
Doug Tuthill, Chief Vision Officer of Florida’s powerful voucher group Step Up for Students, has been one of the loudest champions of this model. He argues that “children aren’t standardized” and that public schools cannot meet all their needs. His solution: Education Savings Accounts (ESAs)—the educational equivalent of health savings accounts—which allow parents to assemble a patchwork of services from multiple providers. Unlike traditional schools, ESAs turn education into an à la carte menu.
In this vision, no single provider ensures coherence or accountability. Markets replace systems. Families chose from an array of products and services, becoming customers; education becomes a product. Once fragmented, public education will never be able to be reassembled—and the public will lose its voice in shaping how and why children are educated.
This idea isn’t new. It traces back to Milton Friedman’s 1955 proposal and has since been carried forward by Jeb Bush and his allies. For over 25 years, Florida lawmakers have expanded Friedman’s free-market vision—building charter schools, broadening voucher programs, and now creating universal ESAs. Today, half of Florida’s K–12 students attend a school other than their assigned public school.
Yet despite this celebrated smorgasbord of options, most families still choose public schools:
* 49% attend their assigned district school
* 20% choose another option within their district system
Meanwhile, voucher-funded private schools and charters remain a distant third.
Florida’s public schools already offer robust options: advanced coursework, dual enrollment, apprenticeships, magnets, virtual programs, and career/technical pathways. Families overwhelmingly choose—and communities consistently support—public schools. That’s a problem for privatizers: How do you build a thriving marketplace when families still prefer their local public schools? You force public schools to participate.
At a 2018 panel hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation’s Lindsey Burke (lead author of Project 2025’s chapter on the U.S. Department of Education) spelled out the strategy:
“When we get to the point where every child, from the first day of kindergarten, is funded by an ESA, traditional district schools—every school, every provider—will have no choice but to unbundle and sell directly to parents. And we will get there.”
That “there” is now very close. On August 4, 2025, the Florida School Boards Association hosted a webinar where Step Up for Students pitched its new e-commerce marketplace, EMA (Education Market Assistant), to district leaders. Step Up framed it as the “next phase” of public education in Florida.
The pitch was simple:
* Districts can generate revenue by selling à la carte courses and services to ESA-funded homeschoolers.
* EMA operates like “Amazon,” with families shopping for classes and services.
* Payment is direct, up-front, and non-refundable—even if a student never completes the course.
* Districts set their own prices, limits, and contracts—including whether to serve (or decline) students with disabilities.
* Other districts and charters are already joining, so don’t miss out.
Keith Jacobs, Assistant Director, Provider Development at Step Up, pointed to the nearly 90,000 homeschool students publicly funded by Florida’s new PEP (Personalized Education Program) vouchers as proof that “families have spoken” and want customization. He urged districts to “take advantage” of ESA dollars by luring homeschoolers into part-time public school enrollment.
The response from board members was mixed. One Citrus County board member gushed that he had “goosebumps.” Others expressed unease. One texted privately: “They are missing the whole point of public school.”
Concerns quickly emerged:
* Districts would be paid whether or not students completed coursework—Jacobs and Tuthill presented this as a feature, not a flaw.
* Students with disabilities who give up their IDEA protections could be denied services unless their families paid more—again framed as “flexibility.”
* When asked whether districts had ever been sued for refusing services, Step Up leaders flatly answered “no.”
The underlying message was clear: This is about dismantling public schools. As Jacobs admitted, “What we’re looking at is we’re breaking the traditional model.”
Why, then, would districts sign on? Clearly Step Up needs them. Without public schools, the marketplace lacks the quality offerings families want. For years, homeschoolers could part-time enroll in public schools with state reimbursement. By taking their full per-student funding as a PEP voucher, they lost that option. Now, Step Up wants districts back in the game—but on new, market-based terms.
The danger is obvious. If districts buy in, they help normalize the idea that education is not a universal public good, but a private commodity to be bought and sold.
Step Up’s pitch may sound innovative—new revenue streams, flexibility, customization—but it’s a Trojan horse. Public schools aren’t vendors in a marketplace; they are community institutions charged with educating “all’ children. By participating in Step Up’s scheme, school boards risk helping dismantle the very system they are sworn to protect.
As elected officials, Florida’s school board face a stark choice:
- Defend the public education system you were elected to protect.
- Or become complicit in dismantling it.
What’s at stake is nothing less than the future of Florida’s public schools—and the communities they are sworn to serve.