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Articles by Ron Matus
With school choice, everything old is new again
OCALA, Fla. – In Florida, it’s easy to find choice-enabled approaches to teaching and learning that blend different influences, in accord with what families and educators think is best (like this, this, and this). But it’s also impossible to miss how some enduring education traditions are finding new life in their “old school” forms (like here, here, and here). You can add Charlotte Mason to this education revival.
Moving to Florida to start a school, thanks to school choice
FREEPORT, Fla. – When Lindy Wood first heard about school choice in Florida, she was living in her home state of Alabama and frustrated with the lack of educational opportunities for her son, Weston. Weston is on the autism spectrum. And while Alabama had a private school choice program back then, it was limited, and Weston would not have qualified. Florida is “putting the power in the hands of mom and dad,” thought Lindy, then a psychiatric nurse practitioner.
School choice helps a wild school put down new roots in Florida
BROOKSVILLE, Fla. – Once they decided to sell their teaching farm in Indiana, Amanda Jo and John Boener knew they were going to move their homeschooling family to another state. They just didn’t think it’d be Florida. The couple’s nature-connected education venture is called A Wild Home, and a wild home and its affiliated wild school couldn’t possibly fit in a state teeming with 23 million people, right? AJ and John Boener believe students learn best by doing.
At the ranch school, core academics come with cows and confidence
LAUREL HILL, Fla. – Bryan and Laine Baker didn’t set out to start a school. They were focused on their kids and their up-and-coming cattle operation. But then Laine met a woman at a business conference in 2023 who was creating a hybrid homeschool 20 miles from the Bakers’ ranch. The pair kept in touch, and one day, the woman asked if the homeschoolers in her orbit could do a “ranch day” at the Baker place.
Jeb Bush: States should help create more private school options for families
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who helped launch the state’s school choice revolution 25 years ago, said government needs to do more to increase the supply of private school seats. Speaking to Michael Horn on The Future of Education podcast, Bush, who was joined by Primer school network founder Ryan Delk, said the state has a responsibility to ensure there are options for students who want them – and that includes increasing the supply side.
Cultivating ‘skilled hands and wise hearts’
This à la carte learning provider uses woodwork to instill deeper lessons Alex Knott, right, left a successful career in mechanical engineering to become a woodworking instructor at The Sloyd School, which he and his wife opened in 2022. (Photos by Ron Matus) JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Alex Knott began to gravitate toward woodworking in 2021, first as he was remodeling he and his wife’s fixer-upper, then as he was teaching his friend’s kids how to build birdhouses.
School choice and innovation in small-town U.S.A.
GLEN ST. MARY, Fla. – Baker County is in a piney corner of North Florida that hugs the Georgia line near the Okefenokee Swamp. It’s part of metro Jacksonville, but on the country side, not the coastal side, still more small town than sprawl. Its biggest town, Macclenny, boasts 7,304 people. One of its top employers is a Walmart distribution center. Places like Baker County aren’t often associated with school choice and innovation, but it’s not because those things aren’t happening there. They are.
School officer stops armed teenager before he enters building
(Daily Caller News Foundation) – A 16-year-old former student armed with a handgun was stopped before he entered a Daytona Beach, Florida, high school, local media reported. A school resource officer (SRO) and an “armed guardian” at Mainland High School confronted the former student, who had fled from a SRO when trying to re-register at the school earlier in April, local TV station WESH reported.
Report: Florida proves school choice works – and parents are choosing it
Florida is the largest state for school choice and has programs dating back to the late 1990s, which offers important lessons on how choice works. A report from the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal outlines three key takeaways from the Sunshine State, highlighting the power of options. The first is that parents want choices. Florida stands out in that more than half (53%) of students are enrolled in a school of choice.
‘Aider and abettor’: Florida to investigate possible ChatGPT link to college shooting
The state of Florida is launching an investigation into ChatGPT and its parent company, OpenAI, over whether the company’s product contributed to the mass shooting at Florida State University last spring. “Unfortunately, what we’ve seen in our initial review is that ChatGPT offered significant advice to the shooter before he committed such heinous crimes,” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said at a press briefing Tuesday.
Which state is next for a Catholic school comeback?
By Lauren May, Mary Camp, and Ron Matus First, Florida. Now, Indiana. Which state will be next for a Catholic school comeback? Our new, 2026 “Catholic school update brief” highlights not only continued Catholic school growth in Florida – which saw enrollment rise for a fifth straight year – but signs of resurgence beyond Florida, nudged by the historic expansion of school choice across America. Students at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic School in Miami enjoy a soccer game.
More bright spots for Catholic schools in America
By Lauren May and Ron Matus Florida continues to be a standout in Catholic school growth. But the latest national data from the National Catholic Educational Association, released Tuesday, shows other states with expansive new school choice programs are gaining steam. St. Cecelia Interparochial Catholic School in Clearwater, Florida, serves students in pre-K 3 through eighth grade.
From New York to Florida for Jewish school ‘perfection’
TAMPA, Fla. – Shuli Goldenberg didn’t need to see Tampa Torah Academy to know it would be just right for her now 12-year-old son, Yanky. After talking on the phone with a rabbi who co-founded the school, she was sure it was “perfection.” Still, she had persuaded her husband, Yisroel Aron, to move 1,200 miles from the Catskills in upstate New York; to leave family behind; to start life anew in the Sunshine State – all for a school they’d never seen. Shuli Goldenberg and her son, Yanky.
Livestock, life lessons and à la carte learning
DADE CITY, Fla. – A friend told Sarah Jones a few years ago she should open her new petting zoo to homeschool groups, but Sarah didn’t think that would go over too well. She didn’t know much about homeschoolers, and the stereotypes in her head told her their parents wouldn’t warm to a tattoo-covered building contractor with a salty vocabulary. But then the friend persuaded Sarah to bring her animals to a fundraiser for mental health programs. Homeschoolers with special needs were in attendance.
In this small town, a classical school is rising, and families are signing up in droves - NextSteps: Step Up For Students
PALATKA, Fla. — All Risa Byrd wanted to do was start a little preschool. That’s it. But then the former public school teacher got swept up in one of the most epic education stories in American history. Now her fast-growing school is the latest example of what’s possible when school choice is the new normal. Former public school teacher Risa Byrd with some of her students.
Catholic school enrollment continues to rise in Florida
By Lauren May and Ron Matus Catholic school enrollment in Florida is up again this year, rising 1.1% to 94,488 students, according to the latest numbers from the Florida Catholic Conference. The continued growth is likely to bolster Florida’s reputation as the national standout in Catholic schooling. Through last year, Florida Catholic school enrollment was up 12.1% over the past decade. Nationally, it was down 13.2%. Students at Tampa Catholic High School, one of Florida's many Catholic schools.
From Minnesota to Florida, for Catholic schools and school choice
AVE MARIA, Fla. – Toby and Nicole Mickelson were thinking about moving from Minnesota even before they heard about school choice in Florida. The weather, the politics, and the taxes were all getting to be too much, plus Nicole’s parents had recently become snowbirds with a winter home in southwest Florida. Still, it wasn’t clear which warmer, less expensive, more conservative state they might move to.
Little Flower power
Editor's note: This story is part of our series marking National School Choice Week. We also recognize Catholic Schools Week, which runs concurrently. The scholarship application season opens on Feb. 1. Visit Step Up For Students to learn more and apply. In 1999, the former school choice scholarship student was 10 years old and living in the Deep South Navy town of Pensacola, Florida.
Moving to Florida for a school called Hope
By Ron Matus and Julisse Levy HUDSON, Fla. – In 2022, Joel Hernandez and his wife, Norma Torres, had to find a new school for their then-9-year-old daughter, Fabiola. In their part of Puerto Rico, they felt their options were, at best, limited. Fabiola is on the autism spectrum. Over the years, her parents visited and/or researched every public and private school in the area that served students with special needs. It was not a pretty picture.
A ‘school of the future’ sprouts in potato country - NextSteps: Step Up For Students
HASTINGS, Fla. – It’s a safe bet most people don’t think of potatoes when they think of Florida. But the area around this unassuming town of 1,262 people has been spud country for more than a century. Now it’s another unlikely location for Florida’s newest bumper crop: Microschools. Hastings is home to a new PreK-8 school, the Free Kids Academy. Founded by Becky and Jeff Cummings, it opened this fall in a century-old building that once housed the Hastings Potato Growers Association.
In Florida, a power tools class is on the à la carte learning menu, too - NextSteps: Step Up For Students
MIRAMAR, Fla. – Florida’s explosion in à la carte learning has created space for all kinds of new, state-supported educational experiences, including, improbably, a class in building with power tools that’s tucked inside an ashram, a kind of spiritual retreat, with a grove of mango trees and a colony of especially plump iguanas. The class is run by Builder’s Workshop, an à la carte provider founded by Marvin and Christine Hernandez.
Florida’s à la carte learning boom: A special report
By David Heroux and Ron Matus In the blink of an eye, à la carte learning in Florida has become one of the fastest-growing education choice options in America. This school year, 140,000 Florida students will participate in à la carte learning via state-supported education savings accounts, up from 8,465 five years ago. Their parents will spend more than $1 billion in ESA funds. These families are at the forefront of epic change in public education.
A school, and school choice, brought this family to Florida - NextSteps: Step Up For Students
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Four years ago, Phil and Cathy Watson were distressed and desperate. Their daughter Mikayla, then 12, was born with a rare genetic condition that led to physical and cognitive delays. With her school situation getting worse by the day, they needed options, now. The Watsons were open to private schools. But they couldn’t find a single one near their home in metro D.C. that met Mikayla’s needs. They even looked in neighboring states. Nothing.
At this microschool, it's math at the beach and swimming with the sharks
November 4th, 2025 ( NextSteps Education Blog - Delivered by Newstex ) Students learn math concepts with manipulatives from nature at Coastal Glades Microschool. TAVERNIER, Fla. - Every year, millions of students across America learn the foundational concept of place value in math. But it's a safe bet few of them learn it at the beach. At the first microschool in the Florida Keys, that's exactly what a handful of kindergartners and first graders were doing with their teacher last week.
At this microschool, it’s math at the beach and swimming with the sharks
TAVERNIER, Fla. – Every year, millions of students across America learn the foundational concept of place value in math. But it’s a safe bet few of them learn it at the beach. At the first microschool in the Florida Keys, that’s exactly what a handful of kindergartners and first graders were doing with their teacher last week. Standing in the shade of buttonwoods on the edge of the Atlantic, they used mahogany seed pods, mangrove propagules, and sea grape leaves to help their brains grasp the idea.
Free school? Microschool? Unicorn school? Whatever you call it, it’s been thriving for 50 years
ARCHER, Fla. – Archer is a crossroads community of 1,100 people 15 minutes from the college town of Gainesville, but far enough away to have its own quirky identity. It’s surrounded by live oak-studded ranch land but calling it a “farm town” doesn’t ring right. When railroads ruled the Earth, Archer was a whistle stop on the first line connecting the Atlantic to the Gulf. In the late 1800s, T.
Why Students and Families Don’t Use Their School Choice Scholarships Original
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter No state in America has seen more change in its K-12 offerings than Florida: 500,000 students are now using choice scholarships for private schools or a la carte education; and more than half of all students – 1.8 million – are enrolled in something other than their zoned neighborhood schools. But even amid this dynamic, choice-driven landscape, some families still can’t access or afford the schools they want.
Going with Plan B: Why thousands of parents didn’t use their school choice scholarships - NextSteps: Step Up For Students
By Ron Matus and Dava Cherry Florida’s choice-driven education system is the most dynamic and diverse in America, but it’s facing new tests. This year, 41,000 Florida students were awarded school choice scholarships but never used them. We wanted to know why, so we surveyed their parents. The 2,739 who responded had a lot to tell us.
Catholic enrollment update 2025
The most encouraging trend lines for Catholic schools in America continue to be in Florida, where enrollment grew another 2.3% this year, according to fresh national data. Over the past decade, Catholic school enrollment is down 13.2% nationally, but up 12.1% in Florida. That tidbit and more can be found in our new Catholic schools update brief, which is primarily based on new enrollment figures from the National Catholic Educational Association and Florida Catholic Conference.
A Montessori microschool for deaf students – and a sign of things to come - NextSteps: Step Up For Students
CLEARWATER, Fla. – More than 20 years ago, Julie Rutenberg and Colette Derks harnessed some of the first private school choice programs in America to create a bespoke little school they knew their community needed. All these years later, Blossom Montessori School for the Deaf continues to show what kind of diverse, ever-expanding options are possible when education choice is in the mix. Rutenberg founded Blossom in 2003. Derks, now the associate director, helped stand it up.
Opportunities and obstacles for NC microschools
Despite (or maybe due to) their small size, microschools are becoming increasingly popular in North Carolina and beyond. On May 3, the John Locke Foundation convened a group of education policy experts, educational entrepreneurs, and prospective school founders in Greensboro to highlight the opportunities and obstacles facing these schools.
For this former public school educator, starting a microschool was a dream come true
SARASOTA, Fla. – Alison Rini thought her destiny was to be the principal at a traditional public school. She had been the principal at a charter school, the assistant principal at a Title I district school, and the assistant principal at a magnet school for gifted students. But in the wake of Covid, Rini began to feel “adrift.” The system, in her view, proved incapable of helping students, particularly low-income students, overcome the academic and behavioral deficits left by distance learning.
Active shooter reported on campus of Florida State University
An active shooter in the area of the Florida State University student union was reported around 12:30 p.m. local time. Victims are being brought into the university hospital, a source with knowledge of the situation tells The Lion. Live news video of the scene shows law enforcement officers running with guns drawn onto campus. This story is breaking.
Battle for the American Mind: Defense secretary Pete Hegseth says classical Christian education key to winning America back
When he was first nominated for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth stoked the fires of patriotism with bold ideas of military reform and American dominance. But Hegseth knows whizzing bullets and brawny soldiers aren’t enough to revive America’s glory days. In his 2022 book Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation, Hegseth explains how public education went awry and how the U.S. can be revived by returning to its philosophical roots.
On track to accelerate as education choice expands
Andrea Leib has long been ahead of the curve. Twenty years ago, the former public school teacher, guidance counselor, and tutor was also a motocross mom, travelling the country as her son competed at the highest levels. Soon she found herself not only teaching him in between races, but helping more and more other athletes. It quickly became apparent that a bigger solution was needed.
Where kids still play in the woods
FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. – Millions of students in American public schools are lucky if they get 30 minutes of recess a day. But the students at Wild Oak Explorers spend hours at a time roaming an 8-acre oasis of pines, ponds, and trails not far from the Georgia line. On a recent, typical day, they surveyed the property to make maps, picked apart pinecones for make-believe tea, fed wax myrtle to a herd of goats – and did whatever else their imaginations spurred them to.
In the most school choice rich state in America, 1 in 5 Black students now enrolled outside district schools
Three decades ago, dozens of Black families in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami enrolled their children in Florida’s first charter school. They didn’t know it, but they were kickstarting the most dramatic, statewide, educational shift for Black students in America. Today, 140,000+ Black students in Florida are being educated outside district schools.
Catholic school students outscored public school peers by 10-20 points on national assessment
Recent data from the Nation’s Report Card shows Catholic school students consistently outperform those in public schools in the United States. The National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) calls the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) the “gold standard of testing,” boasting of Catholic education’s longstanding excellence.
New Idaho Christian school highlights national rise in private education
A Christian school that’s doubled in enrollment the past four years plans to open Idaho’s largest pre-K-12 private school, reflecting a continuing national explosion in private school enrollment. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment at Cole Valley Christian Schools in Meridian has ballooned from 700 students to nearly 1,400. The school opened multiple modular buildings at their Boise and Meridian campuses just to keep up.
The nature school that’s growing environmental leaders
SARASOTA, Fla. – When Briana Santoro and her family moved to Florida in 2021, she set out to find the perfect school for her two young sons. She wanted a school that would be nature immersed, Montessori influenced, and academically rigorous. She found good ones that offered pieces of what she wanted, but none that put the whole puzzle together. So Santoro did what an accelerating movement of education entrepreneurs, including parents, are now doing all over Florida: She created her own school.
St. Louis-area Catholic high school to offer trades program as Gen Z explores hands-on skills
A “Building Trades” program is set to launch at a Catholic high school in Missouri as a growing number of students express interest in alternatives to traditional four-year college degrees. St. Dominic High School near St. Louis will begin the program in the 2025-26 school year for junior and senior students to learn hands-on skills in carpentry, electrical, plumbing and HVAC.
Miami elementary school to close, convert into early learning center after dwindling enrollment
Declining public-school enrollment in Miami, Florida, has spurred the decision to close one elementary school and convert it into an early learning center. The school board voted for the closure of Broward Estates Elementary School after more than a year of research originally designed to shut down five schools, according to the Miami Herald.
North Carolina hybrid school aims ‘to open the world up for our children’
After Tina Cowell finished homeschooling her own children, she found a different mission – using a hybrid model to support North Carolina families who want a little help along the way. “Homeschooling is a lifestyle for a family,” Cowell told the New Bern Sun Journal.
This educator skipped the traditional teacher route and headed straight into entrepreneurship
DAVENPORT, Fla. – Valeria Oquendo didn’t set out to be an entrepreneur. “Ms. V,” as her students call her, had wanted to be a teacher since she was a teenager. On her way to an elementary education degree, she interned at a public school and, initially, those dreams became even clearer. “Still in my brain I was thinking, ‘I’m going to graduate, I’m going to have my perfect classroom, I’m going to be a first grade teacher,’ “she said. But then, in education-choice-rich Florida, a funny thing happened.
Florida charter and school choice summit hits record attendance
A charter school and school choice conference hosted by the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) set a new attendance record, welcoming 1,300 attendees and exhibitors. The Florida Charter School Conference and School Choice Summit has been held annually since the first charter schools opened in the state in 1996.
A microschool in farm country
McALPIN, Fla. – Maybe it stands to reason that in a remote community surrounded by hay fields and pine plantation, students at a new, K-5 microschool would bring baby horses for show-and-tell, and the teacher would secure donations from Tractor Supply to start a garden. But don’t let stereotypes — or tired myths about school choice in rural areas — limit your imagination about the possibilities here.
With help from education choice, this teacher forged a kind and curious and joyful path
SARASOTA, Fla. – After 18 years as an educator in public and private schools, Justine Wilson decided to make a change. She was excellent at her job. In fact, she had just been offered a top administrative position at a top private school. But she didn’t believe mainstream approaches to teaching and learning were the best ones for many students, or for herself. “I was saying things and doing things that weren’t who I actually was as an educator.
‘Alexa, how do you start a school?’
VERO BEACH, Fla. – For eight years, Danielle McLean couldn’t believe her luck. Through all of pre-school and elementary school, her twin boys Jackson and Lincoln, both on the autism spectrum, had only three teachers. Two were Teacher of the Year finalists in their east Central Florida school district, and all of them, McLean believed, were exceptional. So, when it came time for middle school, McLean was distraught. She was not hearing good things about where her boys were headed.
Jewish schools in Florida are growing so fast, they’re running out of room; here’s one example
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – Thirteen years ago, Katy Horowitz and her family moved from London to Miami, where she promptly secured a job at a charter school. But when the charter school abruptly decided to move an hour away, Horowitz decided to give her own school a shot: An unassuming little day care. Horowitz said she never had plans for anything big. But “it snowballed.” The day care began with five students in her home. Soon, it became a day care in a synagogue.
Special report: Florida’s Jewish schools are booming, fueled by families using school choice scholarships
The number of Jewish schools in Florida nearly doubled over the past 15 years, boosted by parents using state school choice scholarships and the migration of families from New York, according to a new report from Teach Coalition and Step Up For Students. Student enrollment between 2007-08 and 2022-23 rose 58 percent, from 8,492 to 13,379, while the number of Jewish day schools and yeshivas grew from 40 to 74, the report shows.
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