FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 19th, 2017
Why Special Needs Students Want School Choice

This week, PragerU released their second installment of the organization’s special video series on the topic of school choice. The campaign’s website SchoolChoiceNow.com will feature all the videos in the four-part series, which addresses the gaping holes in American education and highlights a petition for students, parents or educators to sign.

The newest video, released on April 17, 2017 features Jake Olson, a blind USC student and college football player. Jake explains why school choice for special needs children is the best and most fair option.

In the first video in the series, “Why Good Teachers Want School Choice”, Rebecca Friedrichs, an Orange County public school teacher, showed why most teachers want school choice, whereas all teachers unions oppose it. The video has almost 4 million views.

PragerU has long been a proponent of school choice. “Empowering students and parents to make the best education choices for their families is very important to our organization,” said PragerU CEO Marissa Streit. “The school choice movement lives at the intersection of PragerU’s core beliefs: individual liberty, family values, and education reform.”

“It is indefensible that today, a child's zip code is the biggest predictor of their educational success”, said Craig Strazzeri, PragerU’s Chief Marketing Officer. “Your street address doesn't determine the car you drive, the smart phone you use, or the food you eat, but today, it alone determines the school your children attend.”

As PragerU’s school choice series points out, more than one in six American high school students will not graduate. As the third installment in the series will point out, the statistics are even bleaker for minorities and the economically disadvantaged. African-American students are 50 percent less likely to graduate than the national average. The school choice movement seeks to remedy this and other failures by allowing families to choose the best schools for their children.

Recently, PragerU released a 90-second commercial featuring loving parents who talk about all of the choices they make in their child’s life, except for where she goes to school. That, the commercial shows, is determined solely by their zip code.

PragerU’s third installment will be released on July 10, 2017, and will feature Denisha Merriweather, a University of South Florida student who President Donald Trump has spoken about when he has discussed education reform. Denisha’s video will show why low-income families want school choice. The fourth and final video is set for release on Oct. 2, 2017.

MEDIA CONTACT: ELISHA KRAUSS, OUTREACH DIRECTOR, PRAGERU EMAIL: ELISHAK@PRAGERU.COM