WASHINGTON—Iowa’s legislature late yesterday passed a bill that will empower families with a greater say of how their children are educated in the state. Iowa Gov. Kimberly Reynolds today signed the bill creating a new education savings account.

Jason Bedrick, a research fellow in the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, made the following statement:

“This is a major win for families looking for greater education freedom and choice! The Students First Act, which makes education savings accounts available to all Iowa families with children in K-12 grades, puts parents in charge of the education options for their children.

“This is one of the best vehicles for providing families with more options, since parents can use the ESAs for private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, curricular materials, special-needs therapy and more. We’ve already seen success from ESAs in Arizona.

“No longer will children be relegated to a geographically assigned district school that might not serve them well.”

Jonathan Butcher, the Will Skillman fellow in education at Heritage, added:

“These accounts not only help children who are struggling in persistently low-performing schools, they also allow families to pick learning environments for their children that match their values. Parents have become rightly concerned with the woke agenda that they have seen being pushed in public and even private schools.

“ESAs are quickly spreading across the country, with West Virginia offering accounts for nearly every child in the state and Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, Mississippi, Missouri, Indiana, and New Hampshire offering similar accounts. Lawmakers in other states, like South Carolina, Texas, and Utah, can take note about how these states are offering students quality learning options.”