The Left spent years telling you school choice would destroy public education.
Now Florida is handing them a 93% graduation rate and daring them to argue.
Ron DeSantis just walked into a Florida elementary school and dropped numbers that ended the debate.
Florida's Classrooms Looked Different This Morning
When students walked into Florida schools this week for the 2026-27 school year, they entered a system that has been quietly transformed over seven years.
Seventy-six percent of Florida public schools earned an A or B for the 2025-26 school year – up five percentage points from the year before.
The number of D and F schools collapsed from 70 to 31 in a single year.
That is not a talking point.
That is more than a 55% reduction in failing schools in twelve months.
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2085447559997489181?s=20
For the first time in Florida's history, more than 60% of students are performing at or above grade level in both English language arts and mathematics.
When DeSantis took office in 2019, the reading number was 49%.
It is now 61%.
Math went from 53% to 62%.
Those gains happened while 1.6 million Florida students attend schools outside their neighborhood – because parents have the power to choose.
What Competition Actually Does to a School System
Florida's decades-long school choice experiment answered the question critics refused to ask.
Independent research tracking Florida public schools over 15 years found that the more competitive pressure a public school faced from private school alternatives, the bigger its academic gains – stronger test scores, lower absenteeism, fewer suspensions.
Competition made public schools better.
Florida now has 408,000 students in charter schools, 150,000 in homeschools, and more than 280,000 using the Family Empowerment Scholarship – more participants in school choice programs than most states enroll in all of K-12 combined.
The Heritage Foundation and the Center for Education Reform have both ranked Florida number one in education freedom for four consecutive years.
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2085452257705799864?s=20
ALEC ranked Florida number one in state education freedom – and gave it the only A-plus rating in the country.
U.S. News and World Report has ranked Florida number one in higher education every single year since the rankings began in 2017.
That is ten consecutive years at the top.
Meanwhile, DeSantis invested more than $7.5 billion in teacher pay since 2019 – raising the average starting salary from $40,000 to $50,200.
The 2026-27 budget alone puts $1.56 billion toward teacher compensation, including $200 million specifically for veterans with ten or more years of service.
Teachers got paid more.
Parents got more choices.
Students performed better.
This is not a coincidence.
Every Blue-State Governor Praying Their Voters Miss This
Every governor still defending the old model – the system that tells parents to sit down, stop asking questions, and be grateful for whatever neighborhood school exists – is looking at Florida's numbers right now and hoping their constituents do not notice.
They will notice.
Florida replaced a single high-stakes end-of-year test with periodic assessments spread across the school year – giving teachers time to catch struggling students before June.
That change alone drove the 12-point jump in English language arts proficiency since 2023.
Here is what that means in plain terms: a child who was reading below grade level in 2023 is sitting in a Florida classroom this week reading on grade level.
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2085395228165554422?s=20
That happened because a governor decided results matter more than the system that produces them.
The left built a system that served itself – protected by unions, resistant to accountability, hostile to parental input.
DeSantis built a system that serves children.
One produced a 92.2% graduation rate.
The other produced years of excuses.
Your grandchildren deserve the one that works.
Sources:
- Florida Department of Education, "Florida Continues Record of Education Excellence for the 2025-2026 School Year," FLDOE.org, July 2, 2026.
- State University System of Florida, "Florida is Ranked #1 in Higher Education for 9 Years in a Row," FLBOG.edu, May 6, 2025.
- Executive Office of the Governor, "Governor Ron DeSantis Announces Florida Ranks #1 for Higher Education for 10th Consecutive Year," FLGOV.com, 2026.
- EdChoice, "The 2026 EdChoice Yearbook Superlatives," EdChoice.org, January 28, 2026.
- ExcelInEd, "Competitive Effects Analyses in Florida Showcase Positive Results," ExcelInEd.org, February 8, 2024.
- Space Coast Daily, "Florida Ranks No. 1 in Education Freedom for the Fourth Consecutive Year," SpaceCoastDaily.com, September 9, 2025.
- WINK News, "Gov. DeSantis kicks off school year at Lehigh Acres elementary, touts Florida's top education ranking," WinkNews.com, August 6, 2026.
