The Orlando Sentinel published an article over the weekend titled “Education: Big reforms haven’t yet produced big results ^[1].” It seems to have been meant as a reality check, and certainly it does contain a few relevant facts, but it also leaves this statement from “critics” unchallenged: “schools won’t get better without more money.”

Slight problem: Florida’s k-12 scholarship tax credit is raising academic achievement at less than half the per pupil cost of the traditional state-run schools. That’s according to academic studies commissioned by the state of Florida and by the state’s own spending and enrollment data.

Figlio and Hart, 2010 ^[2], found that the scholarship tax credit program improves academic performance in public schools; and Figlio, 2011 ^[3], found that students using the scholarships to attend independent schools are also benefiting academically. As for cost, the average scholarship is about $4,000. For comparison, the state’s public school districts spent $27 billion in 2009-10 (bottom of page 21, first column ^[4]), for 2.6 million students ^[5], for per pupil spending of just over $10,000.