What ESA documentation does Florida actually require?

Florida funds the largest share of K-12 ESA-style scholarships in the country. The program operators most often encounter is the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options (FES-EO) — the “F” stands for Family, not Florida. Step Up For Students administers it on behalf of the Florida Department of Education. Account management runs through Step Up’s EMA (Education Market Assistant) platform; MyScholarShop is the curated materials marketplace, one spending channel among several. AAA Scholarship Foundation is a second authorized Scholarship Funding Organization (SFO) that families may use. Once approved as a provider, the question becomes what you actually have to submit each quarter to keep the money flowing without holds, denials, or surprise clawbacks.

The two things Florida actually wants

Florida Step Up looks at two pieces of evidence per quarter, not one.

1. A quarterly attendance summary that demonstrates the student was, in fact, attending. Florida treats attendance as part of eligibility, not an afterthought.
2. A short progress report or attestation per student. Step Up calls it a “learning plan progress note.” In practice it is one to three sentences per student describing what subjects they engaged with and how they performed.

Both pieces are submitted through the provider portal. If you only submit the attendance summary and skip the progress note, your invoice for the quarter can still be marked pending. If you submit the progress note but the attendance summary is missing for any student receiving Step Up funding, the same thing happens.

What gets accepted

The Step Up reviewers are looking for the basics done well:

• The student’s name as it appears in their Step Up record. Not a nickname.
• The reporting period clearly labeled. Use the quarter window the program defines, not your own academic calendar.
• Specific subjects, not “all subjects.” “Reading, mathematics, science, social studies, physical activity” reads better than “general education.”
• A short, candid sentence on progress. “Reading on grade level, mathematics one grade below, addressing through targeted practice three times per week” is the right register.
• Attendance count as a number out of the school days in the reporting period.

What gets denied

Three patterns get reports denied or kicked back for revision.

1. Copy-paste boilerplate.If every student’s progress note is identical, the reviewer assumes you did not generate the note from real observation.
2. Missing attendance. Even if you have full attendance recorded, you have to submit it. Step Up does not infer attendance from your invoice.
3. Reporting period drift.Submitting an attendance summary for the wrong quarter or for your school’s academic quarter rather than Step Up’s defined quarter is a fast denial.

Attendance is its own problem

Florida treats attendance for ESA-funded students as a separate compliance burden from the financial side. Even if you marked every day in your roster, you still owe a structured export per student per quarter. This is the part that most often slips when an operator is relying on a spreadsheet, because the spreadsheet is fine for tracking and terrible for export.

Where this lives in CohortLedger

Inside the dashboard, Florida-specific compliance shows up in the Compliance tab with a quarterly checklist: attendance summary, per-student progress note, due date. Attendance entries from the Attendance tab feed the export. The point is to make the quarterly submission a two-screen job, not a Sunday-night scramble.

Florida-specific question we did not cover? Email hello@cohortledger.com. We will only state what we have confirmed.