ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Travis Pillow
My background story
What I did before joining Step Up For Students
What do I do on my day off?
How to reach out?
03/31/25 | Travis Pillow
Update: More than 425,000 students apply for Florida education choice scholarships
Updated March. 31, 2025 After a record-setting opening weekend in which more than 120,000 students applied for Florida K-12 scholarships, demand remains high. Step Up For Students, the nonprofit organization...
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03/31/25 | Travis Pillow
National Education News: Abundance
Good Morning, and welcome to our weekly roundup of education news from around the country. The word of the week is “abundance.” That’s the title of Ezra Klein and Derek...
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03/21/25 | Travis Pillow
National education news: Cat and mouse
Happy Friday, and welcome to our weekly roundup of education news around the country. The Wall Street Journal published a deep dive on AI cheating in schools — and futile...
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03/14/25 | Travis Pillow
National Education News: À La Carte
Happy Friday, and welcome to our weekly roundup of national education news. Our colleague Ron Matus recently joined Michael Horn to discuss Florida’s evolution from school choice to education choice....
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03/07/25 | Travis Pillow
National Education News: Peak public school?
Happy Friday, and welcome to our weekly roundup of national education news. Robert Pondiscio of the American Enterprise Institute marks a milestone that will shape U.S. education in the coming...
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02/28/25 | Travis Pillow
National education news: Definitional questions
The U.S. Supreme Court has set an April hearing for a landmark case that could pave the way for religious charter schools. Catholic dioceses in Oklahoma received state approval to...
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02/21/25 | Travis Pillow
National education news: Ahead of their time
Christopher Jencks, the scholar of economic inequality and intellectual pioneer of school choice, passed away last week at 88. He authored a federally funded report that led to an early...
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02/14/25 | Travis Pillow
National education news: Teaching machines
Sunday afternoon, while most Americans settled in for the Super Bowl, Open AI’s Sam Altman published a blog post that made some extraordinary claims: In a decade, perhaps everyone on...
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02/07/25 | Travis Pillow
National education news: Can less be more?
As public education shifts into a new era, contradictions are bound to emerge. A new survey released this week reveals one: Families and teachers seem to want less schooling. The...
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01/31/25 | Travis Pillow
Districts are leading Florida’s generational education transformation
A generation ago, Florida’s school districts could safely assume that most students would board a yellow bus (or perhaps walk less than two miles) to a public school they operated. ...
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01/30/25 | Travis Pillow
National education news: Down, but why?
This week’s roundup of national education news is focused on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Wednesday’s release of the 2024 Nation’s Report Card brought grim news. TL;DR: Results are...
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01/23/25 | Travis Pillow
National education news: Institutions, individuals and trust
This week’s biggest story on forces shaping public education didn’t show up in the education section. The New York Times published a new survey showing nine in ten Americans, with...
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01/16/25 | Travis Pillow
National education news: Do the math
Education writer Lauren Camera revives an overlooked report from last year showing the most effective thing educators can do to boost students’ later-in-life outcomes: improving math skills. Specifically, the analysis...
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01/13/25 | Travis Pillow
By the numbers: Florida’s history-making growth of education options
This school year, Florida is empowering half a million students to direct funding to education options of their family’s choice. In the 2023-24 school year, after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed...
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01/09/25 | Travis Pillow
Ten trends that will shape the education news in 2025
Today we are debuting an interruption of our normal roundup of Florida education news with a new weekly scan of events across the country. It will land in your inboxes...
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11/04/24 | Travis Pillow
Analysis: Florida schools boast better reading results, especially for low-income students, for less money
Florida’s public schools score among the best in the nation in nine-year-olds’ reading achievement. For low-income students, their results are the best in the nation, period. And they also deliver...
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10/08/24 | Travis Pillow
Florida school district offers virtual classes to scholarship students – with more to follow
This school year, 2024-2025, for the first time, Brevard County students using Florida’s education choice scholarship programs will have a new option: the ability to sign up for online courses...
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07/17/24 | Travis Pillow
Nearly half a million students awarded Florida education choice scholarships
Nearly half a million Florida students have been awarded scholarships that will allow them to direct public education funding to providers of their choice next school year. Step Up For...
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