As Arkansas parents, educators and officials prepare for the third school year under the LEARNS Act, many see both benefits and challenges associated with one of the broadest education overhauls in the state’s history.
Prior to being sworn in as governor in January 2023, Sarah Huckabee Sanders championed what would become known as the LEARNS Act, and made its passage a top priority during her first three months in office. Despite overwhelming support from the Republican supermajority in the Arkansas Legislature, the act also drew stiff opposition from the state’s Democrats, protests by public school advocates and efforts through litigation and ballot initiatives seeking to overturn all or portions of the act.
The 145-page legislative package touches on everything from teacher pay, to public funds made available to families enrolling in private schools or homeschooling, to literacy requirements, early childhood education and even campus safety. It expands maternity leave for educators and provides new pathways for people to become educators. Even as the act enters its third school year in effect, aspects of the overhaul are being newly implemented or tweaked. LEARNS stands for literacy, empowerment, accountability, readiness, networking and safety.
“LEARNS was not something where we just tinkered around the edges,” Sanders said during an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “It was a transformational piece of legislation.”
During a mid-July meet and greet event at the Lady Birds Café in Sheridan, she said the overhaul “transformed our education system, flipped it on its head, making Arkansas competitive and, frankly, a blueprint for what every other state in the country is trying to do.”
Education Department Secretary Jacob Oliva said a key goal in the next year is to provide aid that meets the needs of specific areas.
“Now that we’ve built an aligned system, I think we can really tailor our support to meet the individual needs of schools and communities,” Oliva said in a separate interview. “That’s where we’re headed next.”
Asked about their experiences in the first two school years under the LEARNS Act and their expectations ahead of the next, educators and parents shared a complex mix of praise, enthusiasm, criticism and suggestions for improvement around its many aspects. While many praised sections meant to address the state’s longstanding teacher shortage, several stakeholders also repeated continuing concerns that not all school districts could provide commensurate raises to their veteran teachers, for instance. Opinions continue to be sharply divided on the Educational Freedom Accounts program, often colloquially referred to as “vouchers” — though some advocates argue they differ from traditional vouchers.
The Educational Freedom Accounts program opened for the first time to all Arkansas families ahead of the 2025-26 school year, with nearly 44,500 applications approved so far, Education Department spokeswoman Kimberly Mundell confirmed on Friday. A total of $277.4 million in funding for the program has been approved by lawmakers, and Sanders has said she is “committed to funding every student who applies and is eligible.” The Arkansas Department of Education is working to revise its Educational Freedom Account rules to align with legislation signed into law during the 2025 regular session that adds restrictions to account funds.
The upcoming school year will also be the first in which students will have to meet a new standard of literacy in order to move out of third grade. Arkansas Teaching and Learning Assessment System scores released in early July indicated slight improvements in most subjects, but suggested only 35.9% of the state’s third graders were proficient in English Language Arts during the 2024-25 school year. In light of that, superintendents said they are taking action to boost those scores in time for the next assessment, and at least one administrator — Hamburg School District Superintendent Nathan Sullivan — said he expects to receive additional guidance from the Education Department about the proficiency requirement.
According to both Sanders and Oliva, the most difficult aspect of bringing the LEARNS Act to bear in Arkansas has not been drafting the package and pushing it through the Legislature.
“Getting the bill signed is probably the easy part,” Oliva said. “Implementing it with fidelity and making sure everybody understands what we’re doing, that’s the challenge.”
Sanders said, “You’re talking about a pretty massive amount of transition and change that takes place and impacts every single community in our state. And so to do something like that, you’re going to run into a few challenges.”
While Sanders didn’t identify specific hurdles related to LEARNS, Oliva said two challenges in particular are common when implementing systemic changes: communicating in such a way that messages go beyond superintendents and principals and are heard at the classroom level — and ensuring everybody involved has what is necessary to fulfill program requirements.
“What the Little Rock School District needs is different than what the Bigelow School District needs, which is still only 20 minutes away,” Oliva said.
PRIVATE SCHOOLS
Applications for Educational Freedom Accounts have soared for the 2025-26 school year, with at least 49,652 applications submitted by Friday afternoon, Mundell said. The initiative greatly expands taxpayers’ funding of student tuition and other costs related to private schools.
The application portal for Educational Freedom Accounts will close Aug. 15, according to the agency.
For its inaugural iteration in the 2023-24 school year, the program provided $6,672 each to a total of 5,548 students, with 630 recipients of the state-funded Succeed Scholarship from the 2022-23 school year each receiving $7,413 through the program. Under the LEARNS Act, eligibility for the first year was limited, and participants were capped at 1.5% of the state’s public school population.
The cap rose to 3% for the second year, with eligibility broadened to include additional groups. A total of 14,297 students participated in the program at the time, and could receive at least $6,856 each for tuition and other school-related costs. Succeed students could receive $7,618 each.
Despite the massive increase in the number of families receiving Educational Freedom Accounts, several private schools reported seeing little change in their expected enrollment for the upcoming school year. At least some of the students who already attend their schools will participate in the account program, their leaders said.
“These are resources that have been made available to (our families), and many would like to take advantage of that,” said Michael Malloy, head of the Thaden School in Bentonville.
Though only a few students who were enrolled at Thaden School in the first two years of the program used a voucher, Malloy said he expected the number to increase for the 2025-26 school year.
According to Malloy, Thaden School’s student body is “very socioeconomically diverse,” with roughly 70% of attendees on a structured form of financial aid.
Other private schools, though, said they have seen increased interest in their campuses.
At Mountain Home Christian Academy, the student body is expected to increase by about 13%, according to administrator Doyne Byrd.
“We’ve had more inquiries than we’ve ever had,” said Byrd, who previously served as principal at Bakersfield R-IV High School in Missouri. Several classes now have waiting lists, he said.
While the academy offers scholarships, Byrd said the number of applicants for that money is “way down.” The accounts have also enabled his academy to change the way it charges families, getting out of what he described as “the airline fee business.” According to Byrd, the academy used to charge “a little bit extra for everything you did,” such as sports or activities.
“Now, we’ve got everything under ‘total cost,'” he said. “You can come to mountain Christian Academy and your uniforms are covered, your books are covered. So it’s been great in that regard.”
HOMESCHOOLS, PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Cindy Thompson, of Bella Vista, said her family is entering its second year as participants in the Educational Freedom Accounts program. She said the program has helped her family to acquire better resources for her two children, who are in ninth and sixth grade, respectively.
Through the program, Thompson has been able to procure an algebra tutor for her ninth grader — a resource she said was lacking for many homeschool families in her area.
“That is making a huge difference, just the actual quality of education that I can find for my son,” she said.
According to Thompson, the account processes have been smoother this year than the last, when the state switched the vendor operating the accounts’ online platform due to issues with a prior firm. However, she said she would still like to see changes to the way funding for the accounts is handled.
“Most people still have to buy first out of their own pocket and then be reimbursed, which works great,” she said. “The process is pretty easy. But not everybody can afford to do that.”
Even though Bill Beal is homeschooling his two children, ages 10 and 6, he said he has no intention of applying for an account. Beal said he objected to excessive government control, and that he doesn’t want his “strings pulled every single step of the way just living.”
“I determined that I’d rather we decide what we do on our own terms,” he said.
Further, Beal said he believed any program like the Educational Freedom Accounts is likely to be “rife with corruption,” with money being spent on materials unnecessary for homeschooling.
Instead, he said he would rather see further reductions to taxes.
“If the state is able to offer $7,000 per student, that tells me they’re able to offer someone like me a tax reduction, since I don’t participate in public programs,” Beal said.
Sanders said Educational Freedom Accounts play a key role in “making sure that there’s a pathway for every student in Arkansas,” which she described as the “entire basis for LEARNS.”
The accounts program has long drawn criticism from opponents who say such initiatives drive students and funds away from public schools, however.
“I don’t think that it’s actually helping anyone that wasn’t already in private school go to private school,” said Wendy Sheridan of Little Rock, who has a seventh grader attending Forest Heights STEM Academy. She also accused the program of taking public funds and applying them to private schools. Her complaints about the program are similar to those of Cossatot River School Superintendent Samuel Slott and Arkansas Educational Association President April Reisma.
“I’m not for paying for private education with public funds,” Slott said. “That goes against my core beliefs.”
Reisma said one of her biggest worries is that the program might lead more public schools to close, citing increased closures in other states where voucher programs operate. The Washington Post reported in an article published Tuesday that at least 20 schools closed down in the Phoenix area in the past year; Arizona was the first state to implement a universal school choice program, which began in the 2022-23 school year.
Melissa Jacob, a special education teacher, gets her classroom ready for the new school year at Gibbs Magnet Elementary School in Little Rock on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Staci Vandagriff)Melissa Jacob, a special education teacher, gets her classroom ready for the new school year at Gibbs Magnet Elementary School in Little Rock on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Staci Vandagriff)
RECRUITING, KEEPING TEACHERS
Many administrators, public school advocates and officials have praised the LEARNS Act for its measures intended to bolster teacher recruitment. A 2024 report by TNTP states that, by raising its minimum salary for teachers to $50,000, Arkansas has the highest such salary in the United States when adjusted for cost of living.
Oliva, the education secretary, said he believes Arkansas will see an increase in the number of new teachers in the coming year, and that he has heard reports from districts near the state’s borders, such as in Fort Smith and West Memphis, that teachers have expressed interest in crossing into Arkansas for work.
Texarkana School District Assistant Superintendent Terry Taylor said the increase has helped his district in its own recruiting.
“When they raise the salaries to $50,000 automatically, that put us in the game between Arkansas and Texas,” Taylor said.
When asked about concerns administrators and advocates have voiced over recent years that some, especially those with smaller budgets, may struggle to give proportional salary increases to veteran teachers, Sanders said the LEARNS Act removed barriers that prevented individual districts from setting their own salary schedules.
“If teachers — veteran teachers in particular — are having difficulty getting rewarded for their time in service they should really talk to their superintendents and the districts,” Sanders said. “Because we’ve eliminated some of the barriers allowing them to make choices about, if it’s really hard to recruit an English teacher in a particular school in a particular location, they have the flexibility to reward and pay in a different way that they hadn’t in the past.”
Sanders said merit pay bonuses can also offset those challenges, and that the number of bonuses given rose significantly since last year. In June, the Education Department announced more than 4,200 Arkansas teachers would receive up to $10,000 for the school year through its Merit Teacher Incentive Fund Program.
“Getting a $10,000 merit-based bonus at the end of the year can be really game-changing, and again, not just for that teacher but for the community, because they’re investing those dollars and spending that money in the place that they live,” Sanders said.
A University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Office for Education Policy report published in June found that, while the state’s teacher retention rate “stabilized” in the 2024-25 school year, it may have plateaued “below pre-pandemic levels.”
Reisma, the Arkansas Education Association President, said she’d received “emails after emails” over the past year from teachers who said they were leaving the profession.
“It’s frustrating that these really great educators are leaving, but they just can’t make ends meet,” she said, before adding that she believed schools’ non-teaching staff also deserve higher pay. “We talk about the teachers, but we have to talk about our support staff as well, because they’ve not received an increase from the state in a couple of (legislative) sessions now.”
ATLAS
Sanders noted the state’s overall improvement in ATLAS scores in the 2024-25 school year — the second year in which the assessment has been administered — and described it “as one of the biggest kind of success stories that has a data and a track record.”
She attributed much of that success to the hiring and deployment of roughly 124 literacy coaches to districts across the state, a practice brought on by the LEARNS Act.
Reisma said teachers have told her they like that the assessment is better aligned with what is being taught in classrooms, though she added that it may still be too early to determine the degree to which the LEARNS Act affects academic performance. She also said she would like to see private schools be required to participate in the assessment.
Oliva said it is especially important to him that the Education Department release ATLAS results quickly, as they allow districts to better respond to students’ needs.
“They need to look at their data so that they can make informed decisions around their professional development, their staffing, the way they want to support students and families,” he said. “Getting that data back faster helps them to to take action faster.”
With support from the ADG Community Journalism Project, LEARNS reporter Josh Snyder covers the impact of the law on the K-12 education system across the state, and its effect on teachers, students, parents and communities. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette maintains full editorial control over this article and all other coverage.