William Mattox serves as the Director of the J. Stanley Marshall Center for Educational Options at The James Madison Institute. In this role, he works with a wide variety of researchers, policymakers, educators, and parents to promote innovative reforms designed to make it possible for all K-12 students to obtain a high-quality education tailored to their unique needs, interests, aptitudes, and learning styles.
Over the course of the last three decades, Mattox has
- written numerous articles on education-related issues for a number of leading publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and USA TODAY;
- presented expert testimony on education-related issues before legislative committees in Washington and in a number of state capitals;
- spoken at major education conferences around the country and at international meetings in Prague, Geneva, Dublin and Rome;
- led workshops on persuasive writing at Duke, Vanderbilt, the University of Virginia, and other prominent universities;
- written supplemental curriculum guides on civic virtue, including one which won a national SPNovation Award from the State Policy Network (SPN); and
- directed a documentary film and a number of education-related video shorts, including a feature story which won a Spark Freedom national award.
In recent years, Mattox has been honored by the Positive Coaching Alliance at Stanford University for his work promoting character development in youth sports, by Yale University’s William F. Buckley, Jr. Program for his essay writing, and by the University of Georgia as the recipient of its Henry Grady Distinguished Alumni Award.
Outside of JMI, Mattox serves as the advisory board chair for the Village Square, a civic organization that seeks to bridge cultural, political, religious, and racial divides. In this role, he spearheaded the greater Tallahassee area’s commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s birth (in nearby Cairo). He has also served on the Tallahassee Civil Rights Landmark Committee, the Mary McLeod Bethune Statue Events Committee, and the John G. Riley Museum for African-American History Advisory Committee.
Mattox and his wife, Jill, have four adult children, all of whom benefited from multiple schooling arrangements growing up. Thus, Mattox brings to his work first-hand parental experience with public schooling, private schooling, magnet schooling, homeschooling, dual enrollment, online courses, blended education, and other modes of personalized learning.
