Last year, both the House and Senate passed legislation intended to clamp down on low-performing nursing programs, saying Florida had too many that leave students ill-prepared to work in the high-demand field.
Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed that bill, but lawmakers in both the House and Senate tried again this year to implement what they say are much-needed reforms. The bills sought to reverse some of the impact of the state’s 2009 deregulation of nursing schools, an undertaking examined in an Orlando Sentinel report in January, and came in the wake of an FBI investigation that has led to charges against more than a dozen Florida nursing school operators for peddling fake degrees.
The House passed its version of the reform legislation early in the 60-day session that ended Friday. But the Senate version, after sailing through two committees, stalled and never got a floor vote.
The senator who sponsored the bill couldn’t be reached this week and the spokesperson for the Senate president declined to comment.
But Rep. Toby Overdorf the House sponsor, said he thinks Senate leadership put the brakes on the proposal, though he wasn’t sure why, and said he was “extremely disappointed” in the outcome. The legislation, he said, would help more Florida students pass the national nursing exam and eventually work as nurses.
“We had identified a major flaw and we felt like we were on our way to fixing it and unfortunately the powers that be in the Senate are allowing this flaw to continue,” Overdorf said.
Lawmakers in both the House and Senate said the bills were needed to protect students from schools that charge tens of thousands in tuition and fees but put out graduates who cannot pass the required exam and so cannot work.
Florida faces a dire nursing shortage — the state is expected to need 60,000 new workers by 2035 — but has among the country’s worst passage rates on the National Council Licensure Exam, which graduates must master.
Nationwide, about 87% of first-time test-takers passed the test, often called the NCLEX, last year. But in Florida, just 82% of would-be registered nurses scored high enough to obtain licensure.
“It’s a disappointment because we remain at the bottom of the pile in terms of NCLEX pass rates in the country and that’s not something to be proud of,” said Willa Hill, executive director of the Florida Nurses Association, which lobbied in support of the legislation.
At Florida’s high-performing nursing programs, including those at Seminole State College and the University of Central Florida, well over 90% of graduates pass the exam on their first attempt. But students from for-profit institutions are far less likely to pass the test than their peers at public schools.
The state’s Board of Nursing once had broad latitude to approve, or deny, new nursing programs and oversee existing ones. But Florida lawmakers in 2009 eased regulations, inviting new institutions to enter the market. Within five years, the number of nursing programs in the state more than doubled. But many were for-profit schools that churned out students whose pricey degrees fell short of what they needed to become licensed nurses.
Overdorf’s legislation sought to weed out programs where few students are successful the first time they take the test, as well as offer some relief to graduates who fall short.
The proposal would have allowed nursing board staff to conduct unannounced site visits, for instance, and require programs with NCLEX passage rates of less than 30% to refund the tuition of any student who fails to pass the exam.
The House passed its version of the bill nearly unanimously in mid-January.
The Senate’s version breezed through its first committee vote. But after the second committee approved a substitute in late February, progress came to a halt.
Overdorf and Sen. Gayle Harrell championed similar legislation aimed at improving nursing programs last year. Both chambers passed the House bill with broad bipartisan support.
But DeSantis vetoed the bill, writing that he feared it would discourage programs from accepting students, push them to focus on test preparation over career training and hurt the state’s ability to recruit and keep nursing programs and directors.
Two years ago, bills focused on eliminating or improving low-performing programs never made it to the House or Senate floor.
Hoping this year’s legislation would win the governor’s approval, Overdorf said he worked closely with DeSantis’ office and made changes to the bill that were intended, in part, to ensure its passage.
The upper chamber’s version, sponsored by Harrell, differed in a few key ways from its House counterpart. For instance, the Senate proposal would have required programs whose NCLEX passage rates fall 10 percentage points or more below the national average to offer three-month “preceptorship” programs to graduates, which would include job shadowing; clinical and nonclinical training; and patient care in hospital settings. The low-performing programs also would have had to offer free remediation to graduates who didn’t pass the NCLEX.
More than 70 programs across the state posted passage rates in 2025 that were 10 percentage points or more below the national average for first-time test-takers on the exam for registered nurses. Those schools included Riggs College of Allied Health in Longwood, where just 69% of graduates scored high enough to work as nurses.
Harrell could not be reached for comment this week.
Some private school leaders felt the legislation targeted them unfairly.
“It is focused on closing as many private schools as possible,” said Bob Harris, a lobbyist and attorney who spoke on behalf of the Florida Association of Independent Nursing Schools during a Senate committee meeting last month.
Harris said he thought the legislation would worsen Florida’s nursing shortage by reducing seats in programs across the state.
Melanie Leyva, a lobbyist for Chamberlain University, said it takes time for struggling programs to get back on track. The legislation allowed programs with low NCLEX passage rates to sit on probation for two years before facing closure and that’s not enough, she said.
Chamberlain’s two campuses in Jacksonville and South Florida posted passage rates of 79% and 72%, trailing the national average, in 2025.
“When a school falls below benchmarks and gets on probation it has to do a lot of work to improve,” Leyva said.
Harrell pushed back on the notion that her bill was designed to target private schools. Graduates from a few public campuses also perform poorly on the NCLEX, she said, pointing to Tallahassee State College as an example. At the capital city school, just 70% of students passed the exam for registered nurses on their first try last year, well below the state and national averages.
“I think this bill will make a huge difference and it is geared not to private nursing schools — it is geared to all nursing schools,” she said.
Overdorf is term-limited in the House and can’t seek re-election this year, but has filed to run for Harrell’s Senate seat in 2028 when her term ends and she’s ineligible to run for another. He said he hopes one of his House colleagues will pick up the mantle.
“I would hope somebody would be able to pass some legislation to have some oversight over nursing programs to ensure the quality and safety of care for citizens in Florida,” Overdorf said.
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