On July 22, the FREE Initiative at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) kicked off orientation for the FREE Fellowship, welcoming 22 extraordinary educators to Washington, DC to pilot the initiative’s new Agency Curriculum for students nationwide during the 2025–2026 academic year.
Developed in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and inspired by Ian Rowe’s book, Agency, the curriculum is grounded in the four pillars of the FREE Framework—family, religion, education, and entrepreneurship—and aims to cultivate in students a deep sense of agency: the force of one’s free will, guided by moral discernment.