Any discussion of Florida's education system is incomplete without mentioning this: Nearly 50 percent of the state's K-12 students attend a school other than the one in their neighborhood or geographically closest to them. That's about 1.6 million students, according to 2021–22 data from Step Up For Students, a nonprofit that encourages school choice and funds scholarships for Florida students.
School choice in Florida doesn't just mean attending private schools (which over 170,000 students do), attending publicly funded but privately operated charter schools (which over 360,000 students do), or homeschooling (which over 150,000 students do). The state has a strong open enrollment system, mandated by law, that gives parents wide permission to shift their children to other public schools to take advantage of academic, athletic, or extracurricular opportunities they can't get from their otherwise-assigned public school. Over 262,000 K-12 students in Florida take advantage of this opportunity to simply attend a different public school, and over 250,000 other students participate in specialty or magnet programs within the public school system.
