Florida’s school voucher explosion may win the battle but lose the war | Opinion

Declining birth rates and the rapid expansion of school choice have collided, leaving education leaders in a bind.

Families are leaving public schools in search of greener pastures and with them goes the funding that public education depends on to survive.

In Florida, home to the nation’s largest voucher program, more than 400,000 families now use public dollars to fund private education. That includes more than 50,000 in Miami-Dade alone, according to Miami Herald reporting.

At first glance, this may sound like a success story. More options. More freedom. What’s not to like? But look deeper and the cracks begin to show.

The rise of vouchers and charters wasn’t inevitable. It was a response to decades of mediocre academic outcomes, especially the persistent achievement gaps between Black and brown students and their white and Asian peers.

Since the 1983 release of the book “A Nation at Risk,” reformers have framed school choice as the necessary disruption — a way to shake up a system that seemed unwilling or unable to change.

That logic has now become dogma.

We were told competition would force public schools to improve. But public schools were never built to compete. They were built to serve everyone. When we measure them by a standard designed for market winners and losers, we undermine their very purpose.

This isn’t about whether parents should have options. Of course they should. Every child deserves access to an excellent education. The real issue is that we’ve never had a shared agreement that public education is a common good — a civic investment that should be strengthened, not starved, by policy.

We’ve chased reform after reform without fixing what’s broken underneath: the culture of our education institutions. Rigid hierarchies, fear-based leadership, resistance to change and disempowered employees have quietly derailed innovation for decades.

And now, public school leaders are being told to act like entrepreneurs — to out-market, out-design and out-perform their private and charter competitors — while still bound by outdated policies, limited autonomy and political crossfire.

In response, some districts have turned to consultants and customer service initiatives in a bid to win families back. But customer service isn’t just a job title — it’s a reflection of values. Unless school district culture shifts to genuinely listen, include and respond to families — especially those who have felt ignored or unwelcome —these efforts will feel hollow.

So the never-ending, rarely productive cycle of public education reform continues: Try something new without changing who’s doing it or how. New policies. New programs. Same culture.

And then we wonder why it doesn’t work.

It’s not that education leaders don’t want their public-school districts to change. It’s that we rarely equip them to do so.

We introduce competition without preparing leaders to lead in competitive environments. Professional development is almost exclusively focused on what happens in a classroom.

We demand transformation without addressing the humans and the culture that resist it. And we keep expecting that better marketing will solve what is ultimately a leadership and culture challenge.

If we want public education to thrive, we must treat learning as a team sport. That means getting every player on the field — leaders, teachers, support staff, families, communities and policymakers — aligned around a shared goal: helping students succeed

So yes, let’s talk about choice. But let’s also talk about commitment — to every child, in every ZIP code, in every school. And let’s stop pretending that we can cut our way to excellence.

Florida, and the nation, can still get this right. But only if we stop treating public education like a failing business and start rebuilding it like the public good it was always meant to be.

Etienne R. LeGrand is a Miami writer, researcher and leadership advisor focused on workplace culture and talent optimization. She is the author of the forthcoming book “Learning is a Team Sport: How Leaders Can Unleash the Hidden Talent in Our Schools to Transform Student Success.”