Step Up for Students

Step Up For Students was created to help alleviate the enormous educational challenges faced by children in Florida who live in or near poverty. The program provides Tax Credit Scholarships to students in K-12 who come from low-income families. These scholarships allow the students to consider a participating private school or an out-of-district public school that may better suit their individual needs, an option which already is available to families of greater financial means. This choice is not based on whether the public school is judged as succeeding or failing. Rather, it recognizes that different children learn in different ways and that our collective struggle is to help the students who often are at the greatest disadvantage in modern education.

The statistics in Florida tell a painful story, where only 37 percent of African-American males graduate from high school and only 53 percent of economically disadvantaged children read at grade level. The mission of Step Up For Students is to be a partner in the larger solution.