The unbundling of education is shaking up the school system. Conventional schools want to join in. Private ones now offer “homeschooling days”, where pupils can come in one day a week. Public schools allow families to pay to enroll in individual courses like statistics, or play on the football team. “We haven’t had to market our traditional schools in the past and now we have to,” says Howard Hepburn, the superintendent of Broward County public schools, Florida’s second-biggest district.
Education researchers worry about these changes, especially as other states with similar politics look to Florida as the schooling frontier. They reckon some of the rules are far too lax. On a Facebook group for parents navigating the state subsidy system, anonymous users trade tips on getting Netflix subscriptions, Disney World passes and home-gyms reimbursed as “educational materials”.
That might be less concerning if it were clear pupils were mastering the basics. While most states (but not Florida) require homeschoolers to teach core subjects like math, reading, and history, in practice they don’t enforce it, says Angela Watson of Johns Hopkins University.
Test-score data should make clear who is learning critical skills and who is not. But homeschoolers’ exam results are rarely, if ever, published. “I don’t see why we should be using public funds to pay for an education that lacks real quality control,” says Jon Valant of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank. Sheela VanHoose, an education lobbyist in Tallahassee, reckons that there is “going to have to be a fix bill” to fill some of Florida’s gaps.