Latest Redefinition Podcast Episodes
podcastED: The role of infrastructure in education choice success
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - November 09, 2022 11:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, reimaginED senior writer Lisa Buie hosts Step Up For Students president Doug Tuthill and Heidie Nesset, Step Up’s director of platform operations, for a discussion on the vital role that infrastructure plays in expanding education choice on a large scale so that it will be acces...
podcastED: Homeschool mom believes universal education savings account would benefit her family
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - September 14, 2022 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, reimaginED senior writer Lisa Buie talks with Nicole Bradica, a mother of five ranging in age from 14 to 2 years old. The family lives in Chuluota, Florida, a small town of 2,532 residents near Orlando. Bradica, who has been homeschooling her children for 11 years, this[Read Mor...
podcastED: Flexible spending through education savings accounts key to success for Florida family
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - August 24, 2022 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, reimaginED senior writer Lisa Buie talks with Emily Hayes, a Florida mother of three children who benefit from the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities. Hayes discusses how the family has been able to use the funds for many different things, supporti...
podcastED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill interviews education entrepreneur Erika Donalds
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - August 03, 2022 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingEditor’s note: You can read more about Optima Classical Academy here. On this episode, Tuthill interviews former Collier County School Board member Donalds, who is president and CEO of the Optima Foundation, a network of charter schools serving more than 3,000 students. The organization is set t...
podcastED: North Carolina entrepreneur offers affordable private education through network of classical schools in multiple states
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - July 27, 2022 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, reimaginED senior writer Lisa Buie talks with Bob Luddy, founder and president of CaptiveAire, a commercial ventilation system company in the Raleigh, N.C. area, and founder of several schools. The latest of these, Thales Academy, which Luddy started in 2007 in the CaptiveAire c...
podcastED: Florida mom credits education choice scholarship with helping daughter overcome learning challenges
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - July 13, 2022 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, reimaginED senior writer Lisa Buie talks with Sherry White, a former district middle school teacher who taught near Ocala and now homeschools her 16-year-old daughter, Eilise. Born with autism and other medical conditions, Elise needed traditional physical and occupational thera...
podcastED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill speaks with former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - June 29, 2022 15:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingEditor’s note: To read Tuthill’s analysis of DeVos’ book, click here. On this episode, Tuthill interviews DeVos, encouraging her to talk about her new book, “Hostages No More: The Fight for Education Freedom and the Future of the American Child.” DeVos discusses how when reflecting on her time i...
podcastED: Catholic Education Partners president discusses parental choice and how education savings accounts represent the next wave
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - June 22, 2022 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, reimaginED Senior Writer Lisa Buie talks with Shawn Peterson, president of Catholic Education Partners, a nonprofit organization based in the Minnesota Twin Cities area. A former staff member in the Minnesota Legislature who worked for two Minnesota governors, Peterson talks abo...
podcastED: Florida law enforcement dad grateful for scholarship expansion
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - June 08, 2022 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, reimaginED Senior Writer Lisa Buie talks with Shawn McCormick, a Florida law enforcement officer, husband, and father of four. McCormick’s children became eligible for a Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options after the passage of House Bill 3, which extended elig...
podcastED: Florida Virtual School teacher innovates to help students master world language instruction
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - May 25, 2022 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, reimaginED Senior Writer Lisa Buie talks with Caroline Tevlin, an elementary school Spanish teacher who customizes her students’ education by tapping into their individual learning styles. Tevlin transitioned to teaching online after working in a traditional school setting for s...
podcastED: Florida mom expresses gratitude for state scholarship expansion to students in military families
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - May 11, 2022 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, reimaginED senior writer Lisa Buie talks with Tina Riffe, whose daughter, Vivian, 15, attends Grace Christian School in the Tampa Bay area on a Family Empowerment Scholarship for Education Options. Riffe’s father served in the U.S. Navy. Her husband, Danny, a first-class petty o...
podcastED: Florida Virtual School teacher infuses core subject lessons with personalized songs
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - April 28, 2022 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, reimaginED Senior Writer Lisa Buie talks with Michael Bonick, an elementary teacher and guitar player at Florida Virtual School, who engages students by incorporating music in core academic subjects. A teacher for 22 years, Bonick’s interest in music blossomed when his father su...
podcastED: Florida mom looks forward to additional benefits of education savings account
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - April 20, 2022 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingEditor’s note: Caleb Prewitt has participated in six triathlons and started a cooking show on YouTube. You can get Caleb’s favorite recipe for chocolate chip cookies here. On this episode, reimaginED Senior Writer Lisa Buie talks with Karen Prewitt, whose son, Caleb, 15, is benefitting from a ch...
podcastED: Software engineer shares how Alabama school choice scholarship helped him achieve success in education and life
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - March 30, 2022 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, reimaginED senior writer Lisa Buie talks with Nick West, a Mobile, Alabama, resident who works for Siemens Digital Industries and is pursuing a doctorate at Purdue University. West, who attended private elementary and secondary schools, talks about how the Alabama Opportunity Sc...
podcastED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill interviews EdChoice director on how families use education savings accounts
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - March 23, 2022 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, Tuthill talks with Marty Leuken, co-author of a new study on the spending habits of families that use Florida’s education savings account program for students with unique abilities. Leuken’s research shows that the longer families participate in the program, the greater they div...
podcastED: The impact of the 2022 Florida legislative session on public education
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - March 18, 2022 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, Step Up For Students President Doug Tuthill and Legislative Affairs Manager Alexis Laroe discuss the changes coming to education choice programs in Florida following the 2022 legislative session in Tallahassee. The education budget passed by the legislature this year is the larg...
podcastED: Scholarship mom shares how Florida’s Family Empowerment Scholarship is helping her son maximize his unique abilities
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - February 24, 2022 11:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, reimaginED Senior Writer Lisa Buie talks with Simone Arnold, whose son, Ayden, is a bouncy 8-year-old who excels at math and spelling. He attends Phyl’s Academy Preparatory School, a faith-based private school in the South Florida community of Margate near Fort Lauderdale. Arnol...
podcastED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill interviews former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on the future of education choice
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - February 16, 2022 11:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, Tuthill and Bush look back at the 20-year history of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program and the education revolution that was launched with Bush’s A+ Plan, signed into law in June 1999 with the goal of toughening standards for teachers, students and schools. The most con...
podcastED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill interviews co-authors of paper that explores Black education choice boom in Florida
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - February 09, 2022 11:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, Tuthill speaks with Denisha Merriweather, founder of Black Minds Matter and director of public relations and content marketing at the American Federation for Children, and Ron Matus, director of policy and public affairs at Step Up For Students, about their new report, Controlli...
podcastED: How one family traded remote learning at Colorado’s closed-down schools for Florida’s education freedom
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - February 02, 2022 11:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, reimaginED senior writer Lisa Buie talks with Renè Field, a mother of four who moved her family from Colorado to Florida in 2020 to find an alternative to pandemic-induced remote learning that was making her two school-aged sons “miserable.” Field discusses how Colorado’s rules ...
podcastED: reimaginED executive editor Matt Ladner interviews EdChoice’s Jason Bedrick
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - January 19, 2022 11:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, Ladner and Bedrick discuss Bedrick’s new report, Who’s Afraid of School Choice? The report investigates the frequently intense and dramatic rhetoric used by education choice opponents dating to the 1990s and examines its validity, pondering the question: Has education choice “d...
Florida legislative roundtable: What to expect this session
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - January 12, 2022 11:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingIn the first in a series of conversations about education-related outcomes of the 2022 Florida legislative session, reimaginED senior writer Lisa Buie hosted Step Up For Students president Doug Tuthill and chief operating officer Gina Lynch in a discussion about the surge in applications since t...
Best of 2021: Interview with district schoolteacher, private school mom Marie Echevarria
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - December 24, 2021 11:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingEditor’s note: reimaginED is proud to reintroduce to our readers our best content of 2021. This podcast from senior writer Lisa Buie originally published on July 27. On this episode, redefinED senior writer Lisa Buie speaks with the single mother of a 9-year-old and teacher of English language l...
podcastED: reimaginED executive editor Matt Ladner and Step Up for Students president Doug Tuthill discuss modernizing public education transportation
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - December 08, 2021 16:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, Ladner and Tuthill discuss Ladner’s recently published white paper for the Arizona Charter School Association on issues facing the traditional “yellow school bus” public education transportation system in Arizona and nationwide. Ladner observes that traditional ridership already...
podcastED: reimaginED executive editor Matt Ladner and EdChoice’s Mike McShane discuss public education’s accountability myths
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - December 06, 2021 16:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, Ladner speaks with the director of national research at EdChoice about the latter’s new report entitled, “The Accountability Myth.” The report takes aim at the commonly argued position that traditional public schools are a superior education option because they are held financia...
podcastED: Interview with a scholarship parent who became eligible under Florida’s 2021 school choice expansion
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - December 01, 2021 11:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, reimaginED Senior Writer Lisa Buie talks with Megan Luten, a mother of three from Jacksonville, Florida, whose 5-year-old daughter, Ellie, attends Catholic kindergarten thanks to the Family Empowerment Scholarship Education Options scholarship. Luten, a speech therapist, discuss...
podcastED: Progressive education choice icon Jack Coons and Step Up For Students president Doug Tuthill on opening democracy for the poor through education choice
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - November 15, 2021 11:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingEditor’s note: To read a comprehensive overview of Coons’ efforts to change the face of education choice, researched and reported by Step Up For Students’ director of policy and public affairs Ron Matus, click here. On this special episode, recorded to coincide with the publication of renowned B...
podcastED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill on reimagining teacher unions
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - November 03, 2021 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, Tuthill, a former teacher union leader, presents his vision for how teacher unions can evolve in a world with robust education choice opportunity for families who want it. Tuthill’s 45-year history with public education has convinced him that putting education spending in the ha...
podcastED: Scholarship mom discusses the challenges of finding the best educational fit for her children with dyslexia
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - November 01, 2021 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, reimaginED senior writer Lisa Buie talks with Shannon Bloodworth, a parent and education choice advocate from Archer, a small community 15 miles southwest of Gainesville, Florida. Her daughter, Ella, 11, and son, Holton, 7, receive the Family Empowerment Scholarship for studen...
podcastED: reimaginED executive editor Matthew Ladner and Heritage Foundation’s Jonathan Butcher discuss education savings accounts
Podcast Archives - reimaginED - October 27, 2021 10:00 ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOn this episode, Ladner and the Heritage Foundation’s Will Skillman Education Fellow discuss Butcher’s new report studying spending trends of families using North Carolina’s Education Savings Account. https://www.redefinedonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/ButcherLadner_EDIT.mp3 The report ...