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The best place to learn about your educational choices in Florida is the Florida School Choice Resource Center, which was developed in cooperation with Nova Southeastern University's Fischler School of Education and Human Services. The resource center was developed to help the Florida Department of Education achieve the two main goals of Florida’s Voluntary Public School Choice program:
- To reinstate, sustain and expand the degree of high-quality public school choice programs throughout Florida; and
- To expand and disseminate successful implementation of public school choice programs throughout Florida.
The School Choice Resource Center provides a great overview of all your choices here: http://www.fgse.nova.edu/choice/options/public_choice.htm , with commensurate links for learning more about each.
Among the choices that apply specifically to public schools are:
- Career Academies – which generally target students who are at risk of dropping out of school or are not achieving their full academic potential. According to the School Choice Resource Center, “Career academies differ from traditional academic and vocational education because they prepare high school students for both college and careers. They combine academic and occupational courses based on a career theme such as business, health or electronics. They weave the themes into academic curricula that qualify students for admission to four-year colleges or universities.” In November of 2005, the DoE launched a Career Academies website. " "To access the Career Academy Web site, simply enter “career academies” at the Enter Keywords selection from the Department’s home page at http://www.fldoe.org/ or directly at http://www.firn.edu/doe/workforce/ or www.fldoe.org/cc .
- Charter Schools, which we cover more fully in a separate section.
- Controlled open enrollment, which provides considerable weight to parents’ preferred school choices. According to the School Choice Resource Center, “Controlled open enrollment emphasizes the rights of families to choose among existing public schools.” Rather than being assigned to a public school according to the district a family lives in, students may choose a school from anywhere within the district or, if not geographically feasible, from within established zones or boundaries within the district.
- No Child Left Behind School Choice – which provides for additional tutoring and other supplemental assistance to families if their school of attendance does not meet “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP) requirements set forth by the No Child Left Behind Act. You can visit the Florida Department of Education’s NCLB page (http://www.fldoe.org/NCLB/) for additional resources and AYP reports for Florida schools.
Open Enrollment, which allows a public school student to transfer to another public school regardless of residence. … There are two types of open enrollment policies: intradistrict – allowing students to move to another public school within the student’s assigned district -- and interdistrict, which allows a student to move to a school in another district.. In Florida, both types of open enrollment are voluntary
Supplemental Education Services (SES) are related to the above, and available to students whose schools do not make AYP. You can learn more about available Supplemental Education Services at the Florida Department of Education’s SES website: http://www.floridaschoolchoice.org/Information/ses/
Satellite Schools are created through business and education partnerships in which the schools are located on business work sites. There aren’t many of these in Florida, but the Florida Legislature has approved these types of partnerships and satellite centers by encouraging corporations to invest in them by offering special advertising tax exemptions.
Virtual Schools, which are also covered in a separate section
And accompanying scholarships:
to help families afford private schools or defray certain public school costs.
You can also read more about many of these choices in our Educational Choice Quick Links section. Read on for a look at new high school graduation requirements, as of August 10, 2006
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LIFE in Your State 
