Florida's top ranking is mainly due to its academic transparency and a "strong" education savings account (ESA) program, more commonly known as school vouchers, the report stated. Florida adopted its ESA program in 2014, followed by several other states, including Mississippi (2015), Tennessee (2015), North Carolina (2017) and West Virginia (2021). Florida ranked first in "academic transparency," meaning that "Florida lawmakers set a high standard for academic transparency and rejecting critical race theory's pernicious ideas in 2022." On the other end of the ranking, New Jersey, New York and D.C. are "doing little to provide transparency, accountability, and choice to families," the report finds, citing those jurisdictions' 49th, 50th and 51st rankings, respectively. These states top US 'Educational Freedom Report Card' | Politics News (christianpost.com)
You do realize that’s a ranking made up this year by the heritage foundation that ranks shitty school systems high on choice because wealthy citizens opt out of the poorly run systems and send their kids to non-public schools which registers as “choice” in this ranking?
Any rankings with LA, WV, and MS as top notch regarding education is a joke. Florida is a decent system… today.
i think it’s an important component. If teachers are improperly constrained in what they can teach, the quality of education goes down significantly.
What are the dems going to do... You can tell they were disappointed UF remained at Number 5 for Public Schools. They so can't stand DeSantis that they really do put off the feeling they wish we fell in the rankings.
Adjustments to those rankings happen slowly. Give it time before the "improvements" wreaked by DeSantis take effect and get noticed - those that might pass constitutional and institutional muster anyway. Took UF a very long time to climb to #5.
Nah, there are several seasons why we have a better (not perfect by any means) school system that many states. The AP classes is a huge win for the gifted/smart students, while other states are dumb-ing down their curriculum and taking away advanced classes and placement. Some states are punishing smart kids and purposefully making them take basic classes with everyone else.
Regardles of where one places the blame, what happened last year was real. Our accreditation actually had to go through and audit review over it. It was a big deal in academic circles nationally, and why it was assumed we would drop. Pleasantly surprised we didn’t, but the effects of some of the new laws aren’t fully baked in to the rankings yet.
