California spent two decades telling teachers they were heroes while paying them poverty wages.
Florida just did the opposite – and the results are in.
DeSantis just signed his eighth and final budget – and what it does for Florida teachers and students is something no governor has ever pulled off before.
From $39K to $50K in Eight Years
When Ron DeSantis walked into the Governor's Mansion in 2019, Florida's minimum teacher salary sat at $39,000.
There was no dedicated funding stream for teacher raises.
None.
The Teacher Salary Increase Allocation didn't exist until DeSantis created it in 2020, seeding it with $500 million.
That number has grown every single year since.
https://twitter.com/FLVoiceNews/status/2071700277711778190?s=20
This year's budget pushes it to $1.56 billion – a new record – and sets a target minimum salary of $50,000.
An additional $200 million is set aside specifically for teachers with ten or more years of experience, long the forgotten middle of the profession.
DeSantis has now invested more than $7.1 billion in teacher pay increases since taking office.
"In order to recruit new teachers, you need to have better salaries than where we were at," DeSantis said.
He wasn't wrong.
The Numbers Democrats Said Were Impossible
For four years, teachers unions and their media allies insisted Florida's education model was a disaster.
The Network for Public Education ranked Florida dead last in support for K-12 public schools.
Democrats called DeSantis anti-teacher, anti-public-school, anti-child.
Then the scores came out.
The Florida Department of Education just released 2026 spring assessment results showing 60 percent of Florida students performing at or above grade level in both English Language Arts and math – the first time that milestone has ever been reached.
Between 2023 and 2026, the percentage of students at or above grade level in ELA jumped 12 percentage points.
https://twitter.com/FloridaEA/status/2071012976639828091?s=20
Math improved by nine.
A record 92 percent graduation rate in 2024-2025.
DeSantis replaced the single high-stakes end-of-year exam with three progress monitoring assessments spread across the year – the FAST system – giving teachers real-time data to adjust instruction instead of discovering problems after it was too late.
"Rather than do one high stakes end-of-the-year test, we could do periodic assessments throughout the year," DeSantis said.
Polk County Superintendent Fred Heid said the monitoring system gave his teachers something the old single test never could.
"It gives our teachers the information they need to make quick changes in their classrooms," Heid said.
What Seven and a Half Years Actually Built
The media buried the numbers DeSantis just put on the board.
When DeSantis took office, Florida K-12 funding totaled less than $22 billion.
That number is now $30 billion.
Per-student funding hit a record $9,338 this year.
Florida now has the highest average starting teacher salary in the southeastern United States.
The state's rainy day fund has tripled.
https://twitter.com/Floridianpress/status/2071658450551984175?s=20
Florida's total economy has grown to nearly $1.8 trillion – 65 percent growth since 2019.
DeSantis signed the budget Monday at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa.
He framed it plainly: "The footprint of the government is not growing in Florida."
The results for teachers and students say the opposite of what the unions were selling.
Socialist Democrats spent decades promising to fix public education with more bureaucracy, more union power, and more money flowing to administrators.
DeSantis tried something different: put the money directly in teachers' pockets, give them better data, strip out the union middlemen, and hold schools accountable for results.
The scoreboard shows who was right.
Sources:
- Governor Ron DeSantis, Budget Signing Press Conference, Hillsborough Community College, Tampa, June 29, 2026.
- "Governor Ron DeSantis Signs Florida Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Budget," Executive Office of the Governor, June 29, 2026.
- "DeSantis allocating $1.5B for Florida teacher raises, aiming to lift minimum pay to $50K," WEAR-TV, June 26, 2026.
- "Florida school testing: DeSantis announces majority of students hit grade level benchmarks," FOX 13 Tampa Bay, June 26, 2026.
- "DeSantis signs Florida budget, slashes $800M with veto pen," Click Orlando/WJXT, June 29, 2026.
- "Governor Ron DeSantis Signs Florida Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Budget," Executive Office of the Governor, June 29, 2026.
