Now that we are months into quarantine for COVID-19 with no immediate end in sight, school districts across the nation have begun accepting the reality that they won’t be returning this year. As of April 26th, 43 states, along with 4 U.S. Territories, and the District of Columbia, “have ordered or recommended school building closures for the rest of the academic year, affecting approximately 45.1 million public school students.” These sudden and mass closures have forced schools to reevaluate everything.

At his State of the Union address last week, President Trump highlighted the need for school choice across America, and rightly so. There is nobody who knows better what education is most suitable for their children than parents and the student themselves. Certainly, the government does not know best and we should do all we can to put this decision in the hands of those closest to the students in our communities.

While the impeachment trial continues in the Senate and the House plays partisan games with bills like the upcoming PRO Act, people outside of Washington in “real America” wonder what politicians are actually doing for them. For the answer, this week, they should turn to champions of school choice across the nation, in celebration of National School Choice Week.

FreedomWorks is proud to announce that our bill of the month for September 2019 is the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success (A PLUS) Act, H.R. 3149, introduced by Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), which seeks to provide states with the option to opt out of onerous Obama- and Bush-era federal education requirements.

On behalf of FreedomWorks’ activist community, I urge you to contact your representative and senators and ask them to cosponsor the Higher Education Reform and Opportunity (HERO) Act, H.R. 4098 and S. 2339. Introduced by Rep. Francis Rooney (R-Fla.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), the HERO Act would allow states to tailor education to the unique needs of students, by developing their own systems for accrediting educational institutions instead of being restricted fully by the federal Department of Education.

As the House Education and Labor Committee and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) continue their discussions around reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA), most of the public chatter in the space centers around hot-button issues, including college affordability and student debt. This means that other aspects of a potential deal on HEA reauthorization are flying under the radar.