With à la Carte Learning, a Million Flowers Bloom

Much of America is still trying to get its head around the idea of “school choice.” But in Florida, the state that’s been leading the charge for a quarter century, more than 100,000 families are already zooming to the next frontier – not just school choice, but education choice.

What we call “à la carte education” in Florida is the fastest-growing choice option in the country. It’s when parents use state support to customize their child’s learning completely outside of full-time schools by picking and choosing from an ever-expanding menu of educational providers.

Think of it like Spotify for education. The possible combinations are endless.

This playlist approach is possible thanks to the emergence of flexible choice scholarships called education savings accounts (ESAs). In the wake of the pandemic, ESAs have been all the rage, with state after state creating them. Unlike the traditional “school choice voucher,” ESAs can be used not just for private school tuition, but for tutors, therapists, digital technology, curriculum, and all kinds of other state-approved educational expenses.

No state is further along in showing what’s possible with ESAs than Florida. In a new data brief, we highlight some of the basic but powerful stats that tell the story:

• Last year, 108,850 students in Florida participated in à la carte learning, up from 8,465 five years ago. This year, the number will exceed 140,000.
• Last year, 4,318 business providers served those families, more than double the year prior. Many of those providers fall into traditional categories like tutors and therapists, but more specialized, niche providers are also emerging.
• This year, à la carte families will spend more than $1 billion in ESA funds, up from $320 million two years ago.

Florida created its first ESA in 2014 for students with special needs, and it was their parents who pioneered à la carte learning. Within a few years, thousands of them were creatively cobbling together programming from multiple providers.

When Florida created a new, general population ESA in 2023, the ranks of à la carte families immediately swelled to tens of thousands. They can be found in every corner of the state, and research shows families in rural areas are especially likely to maximize the flexibility of their ESAs by mixing and matching from more providers.

Families aren’t the only ones benefiting. The rise of this new education sector has expanded opportunities for education entrepreneurs, many of them former public school teachers. There is now a growing market for the “unbundled” programming many parents want.

One former public school teacher in South Florida created a service that customizes field trips for students with autism. Another in Tampa built a learning hub that combines a Montessori-based, hybrid homeschool with after-school tutoring. Yet another in metro Orlando created a mobile tutoring service while she was still in college, studying to be a teacher. Her “side hustle” turned out to be so lucrative serving à la carte families, she bypassed working in a traditional school.

As à la carte learning expands, legacy providers are re-thinking their roles. Already, 44 of Florida’s 67 public school districts are exploring ways to offer unbundled classes and other services to à la carte families. Ditto for charter schools, including Charter Schools USA, one of the biggest charter networks in America.

Even at this early stage, the result is a new dimension to what was already the most dynamic and diverse education system in America. The relentless expansion of choice in Florida has spurred the creation of hundreds of new schools, making the Sunshine State the living embodiment of a one-time school choice rallying cry: Let a thousand flowers bloom.

But with ESAs, hundreds of thousands of families in Florida can create customized learning programs from a mind-boggling assortment of innovative new providers. It’s entirely possible we’re now witnessing a million flowers in bloom.