By definition, free market competition creates winners and losers. That’s OK for selling pizza, but not for educating kids.
This matters right now because two powerful Floridians — the new state education commissioner and the Republican nominee for governor — are outspoken advocates of unfettered free markets for our schoolchildren. It is high time to think about what that means, and who the winners and losers will be.
Maybe it’s the schools? A “winning” school will attract more students. A “losing” school will not — and might have to close. Some losing schools will muddle along, subjecting their students to inferior education until the free market eventually sorts it out. In the meantime, their young students fall behind. Who really loses here?
We have the data. National longitudinal research shows that 26% of charter schools close within five years and nearly half within 15. While the marketplace was making its judgments, what was happening to the students and families?
Parents know best. That underpins Florida’s new system of universal vouchers, which allows a parent to receive an average of $9,335 this year to send their child to private or religious school or to teach them at home, few questions asked. The idea is simple. Give parents the money that the state would otherwise spend on their child in public school to use as they choose. Competing alternatives will attract parents and their children — and the voucher dollars. The free market will reward the strong and weed out the weak.
But here’s the thing. While parents certainly know what’s best for their children, there are more than 3,600 schools in the state “choice” directory, and none are required to have certified teachers or even be accredited. They do not have to publish early literacy rates or how many third-graders are reading proficiently, a fundamental milestone. These earliest years are precious, and lost time for a developing child’s brain is lost forever.
So why can parents shopping for breakfast cereal find more information on the box than voucher programs are required to disclose about student performance? Public schools, in contrast, are accountable: Their teachers are certified, and student achievement is measured in ways that make comparisons easy. In 2026, more than three-quarters of Florida’s public schools earned an A or B. Only six schools statewide were graded an F. We know this because Florida decided accountability matters, at least for public schools. Schools accepting vouchers should face similar accountability.
I ran into a parent I knew this month, a dad of five who had used vouchers to enroll his younger kids in a small church school. It took two years to realize they were falling behind, and he returned them to public school — but not before they lost a lot of learning at a key age. He wanted the best for his kids, but the dearth of data hindered his ability to make an informed choice.
A recent Beacon Insights poll showed that more than three-quarters of Floridians believe that any school receiving taxpayer dollars, including charter and private voucher-accepting schools, should meet the same standards for certified teachers, standardized testing, approved curriculum and public audits of spending. Taxpayers want their money spent wisely, whether it’s on police, roads, fire or education.
Henry Mack, Florida’s appointed commissioner of education, wrote something remarkable in a recent post on X: Give the money to the family and “competition then does the work it does in every other market — raising quality, exposing waste, and forcing schools to serve students rather than the administrative structure that grew up around them.” The person in charge of K-12 education in Florida concluded by writing: “Let the market discipline the industry that is supposed to prepare the next generation of workers and citizens.”
I’m troubled he refers to our schools and our students as “the industry,” and I worry he doesn’t understand who the real losers will be under “market discipline.” The for-profit corporations will make their money. Our children will be the ones who suffer when a school fails.
The GOP gubernatorial nominee, Byron Donalds, and his wife, Erika, are true believers in education as an unrestricted marketplace. She has stakes in for-profit charter school management companies and a virtual reality education technology company and wants to “unleash the capitalism, free-market competition in education,” adding that “profit is not going to be a bad word when it comes to the education industry.”
These are your tax dollars. Your children, your grandchildren. Do you want fully immersive virtual reality with AI characters in their classrooms? I don’t. And when it comes to the “industry” Mack and Donalds refer to, what kind of academic or financial accountability do they propose? Any at all?
Certain things in our American democracy are fundamentally important; among them are national defense, police and firefighting services and K-12 education. We don’t leave any of them to the vicious vagaries of the winners and losers of unregulated capitalism.
Instead of creating a national defense budget, imagine giving each American their share to spend however they wish to defend the United States. It would be absurd chaos. Yet these free-market backers want to do exactly that with our schoolchildren.
Great as they are, free markets don’t serve every fundamental need in a democracy. It is time for Florida to believe in, invest in and lead PreK-12 public education with an uncompromising commitment to excellence, just as we do our nation’s military. It affects our national security, our economic prosperity and our social vitality. It is the future of Florida. “Choice” has consequences. The choice is yours in November.
Laura Hine serves on the Pinellas County School Board and is executive director of Educating Florida’s Future, a non-profit, non-partisan education advocacy group. She graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and earned an MBA in finance from USF. Her two children attend Pinellas public schools.
