The PEP. Why would people refuse free money?

Why would anyone refuse the free money that goes with the PEP?

This is a question that I’ve been asked a lot lately. Free is good; isn’t it? Why would anyone turn down free money? Why wouldn’t homeschooling families take the money? What are they worried about?

While many parents are jumping at the idea of free money, there are a number of reasons why many clear-thinking families are leery of taking the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship money for the PEP.

1. Testing
Testing is one of the concerns, and there are a few considerations behind this concern.

  A. Testing—no other options

With home education, parents can choose from 5 options for a yearly evaluation to show that their student is getting an education. Three of these options are testing options, but one is not a test and the other doesn’t have to be. Home education parents could choose to have their child take a state-mandated public school test or a nationally-normed achievement test administered by a FL certified teacher of their choice.

The PEP also allows for public school testing or for any other test on the Florida Dept. of Education’s list of approved tests. Some of these approved tests can even be taken from the privacy of the student’s own home on the family’s own computer. But the PEP does not allow the option to have testing by a FL licensed psychologist; while most parents wouldn’t use this option, it is a valuable option to those whose children were seeing a psychologist for other reasons such as those facing mental health crises.

Neither does the PEP allow for a portfolio review evaluation in which a parent can show and discuss the records kept of the student’s learning with a FL certified teacher and the student to verify that the student is being educated; this is a low-stress option that is particularly valuable for students with test anxiety or younger students. The portfolio review does not make decisions based on a specific test which might not be a good measure of student learning especially if the student doesn’t test well, or is feeling ill, or is distracted or bullied during the test, etc. The portfolio review option is especially valuable for students who have special needs or are behind the level of those in the grade level typical for their age; it asks a certified teacher to verify that educational progress is being made.

Neither does the PEP allow for an alternate evaluation option that the parent and district (or scholarship funding organization or some other entity) agree on. Under this option, home education students who take courses from FLVS flex or college dual enrollment programs can often get districts to accept grade reports with passing grades as proof that an education is received.

Many parents have issues with testing and don’t want it to be forced on their children. Their children may have testing anxiety or learning disabilities or other special needs. They may have issues with the format or focuses of the various tests and may feel that they aren’t a good measure of their children’s education. They may have issues with the testing focus in schools and may want to have their children move at a different pace or have a different focus. They may have researched the current educational standards and wonder at why these tests focus on concepts or skills that many experts on child development say are inappropriate for the children they are being given to. They may have issues with the many errors that pervade many of these tests and the air of secrecy that surrounds tests such as the state-mandated tests which hide the test questions from parents and even teachers.

  B. Testing as the focus of education

Many have strong issues with testing being the driving force in education. Today’s public school tests aren’t used to just show parents how their students’ achievement compares to the other students at their level. Testing has become a huge focus of education. Testing is used to not only decide if some students pass to the next grade level, but whether they get to have fun elective classes or have to take remedial classes to help bring up their scores. The scores are used to judge whether teachers should have bonuses and to grade schools. That’s a huge amount of pressure to put on children, and some parents don’t feel that’s an appropriate amount of pressure for young students.

In addition, as high stakes testing has taken over education, priorities in education have been set by testing. There’s no test on music or art? Then why should a school bother with those? Handwriting doesn’t matter on a computer-based test? Then let’s limit instruction on handwriting. Before a civics test was added to the testing regimen, many Florida public schools (partiulary elementary schools) seriously cut back on or even eliminated social studies instruction. Courses in hands-on skills and time for recess were cut back more and more as they took time from test practice.

Many parents have seen what high stakes testing has done to schools and don’t want to be sucked into that same downward spiral in their own homes. They don’t want to feel forced to teach to the test in order to keep the funding. And while they may be told that this isn’t required, they worry what will happen if they don’t and their child does poorly on the test. They worry about the damage to the child’s self-esteem if they give a test not aligned with the education that the child received. They worry about long-term possible implications of low scores being kept in official records. They worry about feeling pressured to focus less on music, art, character education, cooking, career skills, and more in order to look good on tests.

  C. But the scores don’t matter; or do they?

Many proponents of the PEP will say that the test scores don’t matter. By this they mean that current law doesn’t stop students from renewing the PEP because of low test scores, but the scores do matter in at least a couple of other ways.

Florida law has added PEP students to many of the laws that have applied to home education students for years. One of these is the Craig Dickinson Act which allows homeschooled students (particularly at the high school level) to participate in school extracurricular activities at their zoned public schools or at schools they’ve gained access to through the controlled open enrollment process or at willing private schools. Those homeschooled students who use testing for an evaluation must score above the 35th percentile to be eligible to participate. So low scores can impact options available to students.

In addition, it’s not clear the impact that test scores will have in the long-run. PEP student test scores must be submitted to the scholarship funding organizations each year. Homeschool group leaders were very worried in the beginning about how these scores would be used and asked a lot of questions before the law was first approved in 2023. The test scores were slated to be analyzed by a Florida university with the implication that the results would determine possible additional regulations. This concerned many leaders in the homeschool community. Would freedom be lost with this? It seemed likely based on what’s happened in other areas in the past couple of decades or so that gave funding to homeschoolers.

One question that I was (and still am) particularly concerned about was whether test scores would be considered in isolation for students who began homeschooling far behind their grade level. Over the years I have talked to many parents who were shocked to discover that their children who were previously in public schools were functioning far below their grade levels. The children were often earning good grades in school but didn’t have the skills the parents expected. They were often shocked to find the huge lack in knowledge of topics that they assumed had been taught to their students but wasn’t.

I taught seventh grade math and reading in a Florida public middle school decades ago to a group of students who couldn’t function at the seventh-grade level. They scored, on average, at a third-grade level in math and a second-grade level in reading, but they weren’t in the lowest group. A colleague taught reading to those who scored on average at a first-grade level. We weren’t allowed to give them all failing grades; so, their parents might not have understood how far behind they really were.

What happens to students like those who are pulled out and homeschooled and test below their grade level? Will the system take into account that they started off below level? Will the system penalize them for the poor education received in public (or private) schools? We weren’t given answers to these questions and they understandably worry some people. They certainly worry me as one of my children is developmentally behind in some areas but still making great strides educationally.

  D. Follow the money

Testing is a big business these days. Vast amounts of money are spent on the tests themselves and the practice tests. In addition, huge amounts are spent on practice materials and tutoring and classes, as well as curriculum aligned with the tests.

As more and more people have left the public school system, testing businesses have lost money. Then state scholarships were put in place to help pay for private schools and now for homeschooling too with the proviso that testing is required. This seems to be a mechanism to regain lost market share. Many don’t want to participate in that testing economy. They don’t want to be sucked into it.

2. Loss of Freedom

Home education in Florida allows parents to educate as they see fit as long as they keep records and turn in an annual evaluation of their choice each year to verify that their children are being educated. They can use any methods and materials that they feel are appropriate for their children. They can choose their focus—if a teenager dislikes academics and wants to become a mechanic or a business owner or an electrician or some other career, their parents can choose to focus on that goal. If the parent wants an education that focuses on developing a good moral compass first, they can do that. If the parent sees that the child learns better using certain methods, they can do that. And so on.

Many fear that the PEP is a way to change that. This fear is not unwarranted as other areas that have given funds for homeschooling have used the drug-dealer marketing methodology: giving away a lot in the beginning and then, once the customer thinks they can’t live without their product, charging a lot for it. I’ve followed homeschooling news since 2000 and have seen areas give money for homeschooling freely at first. Then some push to stop using public money for funding faith-based materials or materials that aren’t aligned with state education standards. A list of approved materials is made. Some demand consequences for students who earn low test scores. And so on.

This fear is part of why the PEP is not simply a funded version of home education. In Florida, home education is a particular legal option for homeschooling. When the bill that led to the PEP first came out, it proposed to give funding to those in home education who applied for it, but homeschool leaders worked together to change that. We didn’t want school districts to confuse the additional requirements of the PEP as requirements for all homeschoolers. We’ve seen that school districts have a hard time adjusting to new regulations with homeschooling and knew that officials would inevitably add the requirements to every homeschooler if they kept the records for all. So leaders pushed for a different name for this funded-homeschooling option and a different set of officials to keep the records of this group (the scholarship funding organization rather than the school district). We’ve seen our fears confirmed as the districts gave out lots of incorrect information about the PEP once the program took effect.
Many worry that the PEP is part of a long-term strategy to control homeschoolers more. The number of homeschoolers has increased dramatically in Florida in the past few years. Homeschool parents have had the freedom to direct their children’s educations and this worries some officials who want more controls in place. Giving money and then threatening to take away the funding source gives an opportunity for a lot of control.

3. But we can just leave the PEP if freedom is lost; right?

When the PEP was first proposed, I was involved in a lot of meetings and trainings. I helped behind the scenes. I was in contact with top officials in both of the Scholarship Funding Organizations as well as homeschool leaders who worked behind the scenes. I was told repeatedly that testing was required by the PEP only for those renewing the scholarship—that those who didn’t want to renew could just cancel it. They could send their children to a school or start using the Home Education Program option instead.

But a few months into the PEP, I was told by parents that Scholarship Funding Officials had changed that policy. Those who wanted to leave the program were told that they must submit test scores. If they didn’t, a threat was made that their children would be prohibited from collecting any other state scholarship money. They wouldn’t be eligible for money to help pay for private schools nor for money for college.
This means that a policy was changed and the new policy was forced on those who joined under the old policy. The new policy was made retroactive. This is frightening to many because it has set a precedent for the PEP to do this in future with other requirements that might be changed or added.

There’s a PEP Purchasing Guide and a PEP Parent Handbook (and now a Provider Handbook for those receiving money for their tutoring, teaching or other services or products through the PEP.) These are supposed to be updated at least annually. The new handbooks are set to come out at the beginning of July each year, yet applications for the PEP must be submitted by the end of April 2025 for the 2025-2026 school year. This means that it isn’t clear what policies parents are agreeing to when applying for the PEP; they can’t just assume the policies will remain the same as they have not done so in the past.

4. Changing the homeschooling economy

The PEP was supposed to make it possible for parents to homeschool their children if they wanted by giving them some of the money that the public school system would have spent on their children. This hasn’t played out that way, though.

A.      Does it help afford homeschooling?

When finances have hindered people from homeschooling, it hasn’t typically been the cost of learning materials or programs. There are lots of sources of low-cost materials including curricula available for free online and many sources of used materials. In addition, homeschool support groups and co-ops in which parents join forces and volunteer to provide opportunities for their children are widespread across Florida. Instead, the main financial problem has been the need for one parent to stop working, or at least severely cut back, in order to direct the children’s education—whether the parent taught the children herself/himself or brought in tutors or got involved in groups of homeschoolers. Parents found it hard to pay the rent or mortgage, the grocery and insurance bills, etc. without that second income. The PEP doesn’t pay for those household expenses and so it still doesn’t make it possible for some to afford homeschooling.

When I started homeschooling, my family budget was tight. Very tight. My husband had switched careers and became a teacher just as Florida schools stopped giving automatic raises with increased pay yearly for increased years of experience as well as cost-of-living increases. He was at the bottom of the pay scale. We were able to cope because I cut corners everywhere I could. I used cloth diapers that I washed and hung in the sunshine to dry. We ate out once a year. We rarely got new clothes and the few we did were often sewn from fabric taken from worn-out clothing. I used a lot of library books, cast-off public-school materials that went “off adoption,” free online resources, used materials, and items shared by other homeschoolers who were done with them. We had no cable tv nor a cell phone. But we joined an inexpensive local homeschool support group (which cost $5 a year to belong to) and participated in lots of free and low-cost activities. We went to park meetings where the children played and the adults shared ideas. The kids participated in free soccer lessons led by a homeschool dad who had played some soccer, kickball games led by a mom who remembered playing kickball in school and researched the rules and taught them to the kids, martial arts lessons led by a couple of homeschooling parents who charged $5 a month to help pay for the materials used, and more. A mom who wanted a theater/drama program for her kids, organized practices for a play and found people who shared their experiences to teach voice and choreography and acting and we split the costs to rent a theater and charged admission to keep costs low. My kids participated in lots of wonderful activities that I wouldn’t have managed alone because of other parents who wanted to make homeschooling great for their own kids. I did my own part and led a variety of clubs and classes—sometimes on subjects I already knew and sometimes on things I taught myself first.

My experiences weren’t unique. People across Florida joined together and formed homeschool support groups or co-ops and worked together to enhance their children’s homeschool options.

With the coming of the PEP, a lot of these great cooperative programs have either shut down—in part because the PEP won’t pay for programs led by parents with a passion but no formal training—or have jacked up prices because some people have money to pay more than most homeschooling families used to be able to pay. I’ve talked to people who’ve moved to Florida in order to try to cash in on programs that they can charge homeschoolers a lot for, and the paid programs don’t have the community aspect of the previous programs as children are typically not given time to socialize in the formal paid programs in the same way they could in the volunteer-led programs. It seems that overall quality has diminished as leadership has changed from involved parents to paid professionals.

Even the state has participated in this. The state’s official educational website CPalms.org was previously fully available to parents who wanted to use state resources in their homeschooling. But with the introduction of the PEP, a hefty membership fee was instituted for parents to view many of their educational resources.

B.      Where is the funding coming from?

The funding originally was supposed to follow the child. Money that would have paid for the child’s public-school education would follow the child to a private school or to homeschooling if the child wasn’t in a public school. That was the plan. But that plan was tried in Florida more than a decade ago and was ruled unconstitutional in Tallahassee because it took money from public schools. Before the PEP bill was approved, the funding source was changed to a scholarship called the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship which is funded by donations. Businesses can get a tax credit for money donated to this scholarship.
Many are concerned about this funding source. Some claim that the concerns are unwarranted because it isn’t state-funding because it comes from donations. But others point out that the funds are donated to the state and while administered by private organizations, state law details how funding is to be administered in a way that clearly makes it seem like state funds.

C.      Funding stability and source

One of the concerns is the stability of this funding source. In the first school year, it funded 20,000 scholarships at about $8,000 a student (the exact amount varied by school district and grade level). For the 2024-2025 school year, it funded 60,000 scholarships, next year it is supposed to fund 100,000 scholarships, and eventually it is supposed to fund as many as want it.

How are donations supposed to keep up this pace? What happens when they can’t keep up? Who is funding this at such a level and why? These are all questions that concern many.

5. Proposed changes

The PEP has not even existed for two full school years at this point. It is new. But it’s already undergone changes and more changes are proposed in Tallahassee. One bill that is under consideration currently (Senate bill 7030) aims to consolidate multiple k-12 scholarships with a single application and reimbursement process. It also requires public schools in Florida to do state-mandated public-school testing and the staff to administer those tests at private schools; this could be seen at the beginning of a push to eventually mandate public-school testing for all scholarship recipients and therefore gain state control over both private schools and homeschoolers and their curriculum.
 
6. Current Complaints

I’ve already heard complaints from parents using the PEP that the program is rejecting more and more submissions for reimbursement. Sometimes in ways that seem arbitrary. For example, in a family with three children, reimbursing the cost of a program for one of the children but rejecting requests to reimburse payment for the other two in the same program. Or reimbursing the cost of a program for a child in one homeschooling family but refusing to reimburse it for another. Some have given up using certain types of programs or materials after trying multiple times to get those expenses approved. This means that the scholarship is already affecting how some homeschool. These concerns are not just conspiracy theories….

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For more details on the PEP and the approved tests and current program requirements see
https://www.fldoe.org/schools/school-choice/k-12-scholarship-programs/ftc/annual-assessment-requirement.stml  or
 https://www.fldoe.org/schools/school-choice/k-12-scholarship-programs/ftc/pep-faqs.stml
2025 Senate Bill 7030
https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2025/7030/?StartTab=Analyses#Analyses



 

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