Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program Evaluation

The Florida Tax Credit (FTC) Scholarship Program was established by the Florida Legislature in 2001 to provide an income tax credit for corporations that contribute money to nonprofit Scholarship-Funding Organizations (SFOs) awarding scholarships to K-12 students from families with limited financial resources. During the 2013-14 school year, tax credit scholarships in the amount of $274.5 million were awarded to a total of 59,822 students enrolled in 1,429 participating private schools.  Additional information about the program is available at the Florida Department of Education’s website.

The Learning Systems Institute at Florida State University was charged by the Florida Legislature (SB 850) in 2014 to conduct a program evaluation of the FTC Scholarship Program beginning with the 2013-14 school year. Participating private schools are required by law to report the scores of FTC Scholarship students in grades 3 to 10 on a nationally norm-referenced test or on Florida’s standardized assessment. The 2013-14 evaluation report was completed in August 2015. In future years, the evaluation team will continue to examine participating students’ achievement in reading and mathematics and potentially explore other programmatic outcomes.