Travis Pillow, Author at NextSteps: Step Up For Students

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?

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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...

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....

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...

02/28/25 | Travis Pillow

Update: More than 395,000 students apply for Florida education choice scholarships

Updated March. 10, 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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. ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

06/24/24 | Travis Pillow

In education, this is where the energy is

For the first time last week, I flew home from an education conference with a feeling that recalled Hunter S. Thompson’s wistful remembrance of San Francisco in the mid-’60s. You...

06/12/24 | Travis Pillow

Florida ranks No. 5 nationally for children’s education

Of the 50 states, Florida held the No. 5 spot for education in a national report on child wellbeing released this month. The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count report...

06/12/24 | Travis Pillow

Florida No. 1 in parent-directed public education funding

Florida is now the No. 1 state in the nation for parent-directed public education funding, according to data compiled by EdChoice. During the 2023-24 school year, the Sunshine State carried...