Jon East

Jon East is special projects director for Step Up For Students. Previously, he was a member of the editorial board and the Sunday commentary editor at the St. Petersburg Times, Florida’s largest daily newspaper, where he wrote about education issues for most of his 28 years at the paper. He was also a reporter and editor at the Evening Independent and Ocala Star-Banner. He earned a journalism degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

04/24/20 | Jon East

Auditor General releases annual review of Florida scholarship programs

In its fifth annual audit of Step Up For Students, the state’s largest nonprofit scholarship funding organization, the Florida Auditor General today issued what amounted to a clean bill of...

01/23/20 | Jon East

FACT-CHECKED: Tallahassee educator’s attack on ‘monstrous’ system is misleading

Editor’s note: The goal of fact-checkED is to bring clinical precision to complex issues that are easily misunderstood, aiming to counteract incorrect information before it continues to circulate. Sally Butzin...

01/16/20 | Jon East

fact-checkED: Sanders’ education choice claims in Florida op-ed misleading

With the presidential primary election in delegate-rich Florida just two months away, Democratic candidates are beginning to knock on the door. In a Monday column in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel,...

12/19/19 | Jon East

redefinED’s 2019 Myth of the Year

Editor’s note: While education choice misstatements flourished this year, one was especially egregious: the claim that Florida’s new family empowerment voucher was “unprecedented.” Step Up For Students’ special projects director...

11/26/19 | Jon East

fact-checkED: This ‘quick fact’ about scholarships hurting public schools is no fact at all

A story in Sunday’s Lakeland Ledger about a union-sponsored public education summit in Polk County included a chart of “Quick Facts” that bears scrutiny. One of them, about the financial...

10/18/19 | Jon East

fact-checkED: Family Empowerment Scholarships are not the only state-funded voucher

Editor’s note: We add a new feature today, called fact-checkED, that is inspired by the many factchecking efforts across the media landscape these days. Our work will focus solely within...

10/02/19 | Jon East

Blaine amendments ‘discriminate against all religion’

As religious and education interest groups furiously file amicus briefs in the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case on whether states can ban faith-based schools from voucher programs, a respected Catholic...

07/02/19 | Jon East

Private school responds after being called anti-gay by Florida newspaper columnist

Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell, a frequent critic of school vouchers, is urging companies to stop donating to Florida Tax Credit Scholarships for low-income students because some participating religious private...

03/06/19 | Jon East

Setting the record straight on choice scholarships

As Florida senators get their first look today at a new private school scholarship for economically disadvantaged students, some familiar taunts about academic results for the existing Tax Credit Scholarship...

12/19/18 | Jon East

Florida Tax Credit Scholarship enrollment drops

Enrollment in the nation’s largest scholarship program for economically disadvantaged K-12 students dropped this fall for the first time in 14 years. The decline was caused by a slowdown in...

07/10/18 | Jon East

RedefinED is looking for a new editor

As readers will learn in more detail on Friday, redefinED editor Travis Pillow, an education journalist extraordinaire, is leaving Florida and this blog to set up shop in another hotbed...

03/15/17 | Jon East

Report shows true bottom line on Florida’s public education spending

The most commonly cited price tag for Florida public schools represents only two-thirds of what they actually spend, a new report from Florida TaxWatch shows. The “true cost,” it says, shines...

03/10/17 | Jon East

Trump cites Florida as a model; school choice critics look elsewhere

As President Trump looked with favor on Florida’s 15-year-old tax credit scholarship last week, some of the reviews seemed to suffer a form of interstate transference. The formulation went something...

05/23/16 | Jon East

Does school choice harm public schools? Claims fall apart under scrutiny

One of the most emotionally potent arguments against educational choice – that it cripples public schools financially – is slowly unraveling in a Florida court of law. Teacher union attorneys,...

01/25/16 | Jon East

School choice still rising in Florida: 1.5 million students choose

School choice options in Florida grew last year at more than twice the rate of total enrollment, surpassing 1.5 million students. That means 43 percent of preK-12 students in the...

12/17/15 | Jon East

Why students benefit when scholarship organizations serve all schools

The resistance to a proposed requirement that state-approved nonprofits provide scholarships to students attending any eligible private school has taken on an unusual fervor in Georgia. Some highly respected national education...

12/14/15 | Jon East

BAEO enters legal fray to defend Florida tax credit scholarships

A national organization that fights for the academic needs of black students entered the lawsuit over Florida’s tax credit scholarship today. The group, Black Alliance for Educational Options, filed an...

08/31/15 | Jon East

The distorted history of Florida tax credit scholarships

In a new appellate brief asking the courts to throw out a 14-year-old scholarship serving 78,000 of the state’s most economically disadvantaged students, lawyers for Florida’s teachers union have doubled down...

08/20/15 | Jon East

Solution to ‘failure factories’ must be tailored to students’ needs

That the word “factories” is alliterative with “failure” probably explains why the Tampa Bay Times tied them together for a front-page Sunday education story that is drawing state and national...

04/01/15 | Jon East

New York passes budget this morning without statewide tax credit scholarships

A bipartisan plan to bring tax-credit scholarships to one of the nation’s largest and bluest states has fallen short, at least for now.The provision did not survive the $142 billion...