This article was updated on Friday, Nov. 1, 2024 at 4:40 p.m. with comments from the governor’s spokesperson.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders former Little Rock Christian Academy administrator Gary Arnold to the State Board of Education on Friday.

“What I love most about Gary is his passion for education, his belief that every student can learn and his relentless commitment and pursuit of his faith,” Sanders said in a press conference announcing the appointment.

Arnold is an advocate for school choice and was a member of the “rules and regulations task force” the state used to implement the wide-ranging , Sanders said.

“Through Gary’s careful stewardship, the first school year with Arkansas LEARNS was a huge success, and the second year is shaping up to be even better,” Sanders said.

LEARNS created the Education Freedom Account program, a taxpayer-funded school voucher system that will be available to all Arkansas students in the 2025-26 school year; are participating in the program this year.

Sanders said Arnold will represent the interests of EFA participants during his term on the board, which will expire in 2027. He succeeds Steve Sutton, who stepped down from the board in the middle of his seven-year term.

“The Governor wanted to find the right, experienced addition to the Board of Education who could help put every student on the pathway to success, and that’s exactly what Gary will do,” Sanders’ communications director, Sam Dubke, said when asked why the governor took nearly 11 months to appoint Sutton’s successor.

Arnold is Sanders’ third appointee to the , after and last year. Former Republican state lawmaker Bragg co-authored the LEARNS Act, and Keener participated in a LEARNS work group focused on early childhood education, which is her area of expertise.

The LEARNS Act also raised the state’s minimum annual teacher salary to $50,000 and required literacy screenings for K-12 students.

Arnold praised these and other aspects of the LEARNS Act and said he was honored to accept the appointment and “the responsibility of joining this team.”

He likened working in education to author Mark Twain’s experience as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River in his memoir Life on the Mississippi, which Arnold said he recently reread.

“The most important function and job of the boat pilot is to learn the river, Old Man River, because it changes every day,” Arnold said. “One day the currents will be this way, one day there will be a tree or shoal that wasn’t there before… Life in the schools changes every day. We just have to learn the river and have that growth mindset.”

Sanders said both Arnold and Education Secretary Jacob Oliva “think deeply and critically about how we can fix the areas of our school system that are broken.”

Arnold was head of school at Little Rock Christian Academy from 2007 to 2023. He is now the Director of Head of School Certification at The Council on Educational Standards and Accountability and the founder of the consulting company NextEd. Both organizations serve Christian schools.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders used Wednesday’s “State of the State” address to tout her ongoing policy priorities, primarily education and law enforcement, and urge state lawmakers to pass her proposed state budget.

“Send me a budget that funds critical services for Arkansans while slowing the growth of government and I will sign it,” Sanders told members of the House and Senate during a joint session on the first day of the state’s eighth fiscal session.

The $6.3 billion includes a significantly smaller spending increase — $109 million, or 1.76% — compared to previous fiscal years’ annual 3% hikes.

Sanders reiterated that the proposal fulfills her promise to “slow the out-of-control growth of government.”

“Arkansas had deep, entrenched problems when I took office,” she said. “We weren’t going to solve them with the same failed policies that got us here in the first place, so we charted a new course last year.”

She listed as accomplishments several policies enacted so far in her term, including two laws , plans to open , an executive order in government documents and a social media age verification law, which has been temporarily .

Sanders also emphasized her dedication to funding and empowering law enforcement and said her budget proposal includes $3.8 million that would “replenish” the ranks of the Arkansas State Police. She also said she wants to add 100 new officers to the force.

“There are people outside this chamber — and even a few inside — who want to distract us from these common-sense reforms,” Sanders said. “I beg of you: do not let them.”

Education policy

After prioritizing education during her first year in office, Sanders praised the success of the state’s new school voucher program.

New participant applications , and Sanders said more than 1,800 applications were submitted on the first day. About a quarter of new Educational Freedom Account program applicants are children of active military duty personnel and veterans, she said. The latter group is newly eligible for the program, which is being phased in over three years.

“Educational freedom is the least that we can do for those who put everything on the line for our freedom,” Sanders said. “This time next year, we will have universal education freedom for the first time in Arkansas history.”

The EFA program is a provision of the , an expansive education law backed by Sanders that has made several changes to the state’s education system since its passage last year.

The governor’s proposed budget includes $100 million to support LEARNS initiatives. A proposed $65.8 million spending increase for the EFA program accounts for of the budget proposal’s overall increase.

The voucher program provides state funding for allowable education expenses, such as private school tuition. More than 5,400 students and 100 schools participated in the program’s first year. Eligibility criteria is being expanded each year until the program is open to all Arkansas students in the 2025-2026 academic year.

“Before this year, Arkansas families had no choice where to send their kids to school,” Sanders said. “LEARNS expanded education freedom to more than 5,000 students in just one year. Fifty percent of those students have learning disabilities.”

The Arkansas Legislature passed limited school choice legislation prior to the LEARNS Act. The Public School Choice Act of 2015 allows students to transfer to a nonresident district, while the Opportunity School Choice Act permits students in a school with an “F”-rating or in need of Level 5 Intensive support from the state to transfer to another public school.

The Legislature in 2015 also created the Succeed Scholarship Program, which provided private school tuition for students with disabilities, foster children and military families. The program has been absorbed into the EFA program.

In addition to the voucher program, the LEARNS Act also raises the state’s minimum teacher salary to $50,000 and prohibits “indoctrination” in Arkansas schools. Sanders signed with similar phrasing regarding indoctrination on her first day in office.

The governor said Wednesday that she was proud to have enacted the policy for the sake of “our children’s future.”

Three Little Rock Central High students, their parents and the school’s AP African American Studies teacher in federal court last month, saying it’s “unworkably vague and oppressive, and it discriminates on the basis of race.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday signed expansive changes to Arkansas’ education system into law.

The takes unprecedented steps in hopes of restructuring the state’s K-12 schools, addressing teacher pay, school safety, career readiness, literacy, a new voucher program and “indoctrination,” among other topics.

The legislation was Sanders’ main priority since taking office in January.

“Education is how we invest in our future,” Sanders said during . “It’s the seed we sow today knowing that only our children will have the opportunity to reap the harvest.”

Because the LEARNS Act contains an emergency clause, the majority of the provisions took effect immediately. A few provisions will be implemented later this year, such as the repeal of the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, which will be effective June 30.

Education Secretary Jacob Oliva said his department will be “acting with urgency” as it starts developing rules to implement the LEARNS Act’s various provisions.

Oliva said he’ll be in Northwest Arkansas Friday as part of an effort to meet with superintendents and leaders across the state to discuss components of the legislation.

The new law raises the state’s minimum teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000. It also requires each teacher — even those earning more than the minimum — receive a $2,000 pay raise next year.

A contentious component of the legislation is the Arkansas Children’s Educational Freedom Account Program, which would provide families state funds up to 90% of the annual per-student public school funding rate for use on allowable education expenses, like private school tuition, tutoring and homeschool costs.

The program will have limited enrollment in the first two years before expanding to all families in the third year. It has attracted intense opposition from public school administrators and teachers.

Former educator and Senate Minority Leader Tippi McCullough (D-Little Rock) said she’s concerned about some of the bill’s provisions, including the elimination of a uniform teacher salary schedule and implementing a universal voucher program.

“LEARNS will dismantle and defund our public schools through a voucher system that has not worked anywhere ever,” McCullough said in a statement. “While some of the bill is admirable, its purported benefits will not reach our students in greatest need.”

Sanders said the Educational Freedom Account Program will encourage schools to improve.

“When parents are empowered to choose, all schools work harder to attract students,” Sanders said. “Competition breeds excellence.”

Little Rock Central High School students rallied on the Capitol steps Wednesday afternoon to protest the new law. The students first protested the legislation last week by publishing an open letter to Sanders and .

Ten students spoke at Monday’s Senate Education Committee meeting, but when they were told they could only speak on the amendments, not the bill as a whole.

Junior Addison McCuien said she took issue with the LEARNS Act mandate to hold back third graders who cannot read at grade level. McCuien said this provision could negatively impact dyslexic students like her.

“I wasn’t reading at a third grade level and if this bill was applied when I was in school, it would have held me back, and I think that that personally would have really disrupted my hunger to learn and really stunted my confidence in myself,” she said.

Senior Alisha Majeed said she supports public schools because they allow students to connect with diverse groups of people.

It was “a huge culture shock,” Majeed said, when she moved from New York City to Searcy, where she said she struggled as a person of color in a majority white school.

However, Majeed said her confidence in her identity has grown since moving to Little Rock Central High School where she’s connected with other students of color.

“Public schools are important for smaller communities like mine because people get to connect with other people that look like them,” Majeed said. “It’s just a place where representation is more and there is more allowed.”

McCuien and a classmate delivered a letter to the governor’s office prior to the start of the rally.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

Fully enacted, the initiative would include a massive pay raise for teachers that would move the minimum salary from 48th in the nation to fourth; an infusion of resources to literacy instruction, including 120 new reading coaches; a strike against the teaching of critical race theory in classrooms; and a statewide rollout of education savings accounts over the next three years. 

The plan is still only a loose proposal that has not been released as formal legislation. But those elements would make it a transformative bill in Arkansas, where student achievement was profoundly discouraging even before the pandemic. Tom Newell, vice president of government affairs for the reform-oriented advocacy group , said the so-called LEARNS (Literacy, Empowerment, Accountability, Readiness, Networking, and Safety) program held the potential to “expand and improve learning opportunities across the state.”

“Arkansas LEARNS will expand and improve learning opportunities across the state,” Newell said in a statement.“This landmark legislative proposal is a chance to modernize learning, empowering families to choose and customize the education that’s best for their child.”

The package holds significant political promise as well. Already recognizable from her service in the Trump administration, Huckabee Sanders’s rise was assured even before she was selected to deliver the nationally televised response last week to President Biden’s State of the Union Address. But her focus on schools — and especially the strategic decision to combine the additional K–12 funding with broadened educational options — offers insight into the GOP’s policy and messaging strategy just months after a disappointing midterm performance.  

Olivia Gardner, the director of education policy for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, agreed that the “huge undertaking” promised by Huckabee Sanders would inevitably help shape the legacy of a governorship that is still only weeks old.

“She talked about how she wanted education to be the hallmark of her administration, and I think this demonstrates that that is definitely going to be the case,” Gardner remarked.

Boosting teacher pay

While experts differ on the potential impact of the LEARNS plan, none dispute that student outcomes in Arkansas are in dire need of improvement. 

According to the release of 2022 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal standardized test known colloquially as the Nation’s Report Card, reading scores in Arkansas are the ninth-worst of any state. Performance in math was even worse. In both subjects, students lost considerable ground during the pandemic for in-person learning.  

Though the dismal achievement can be pinned on multiple factors — including — local and national experts have increasingly pointed to a deficient supply of skilled teachers. Over the last decade, enrollment in Arkansas’s teacher preparatory programs , leading some districts in the state’s more impoverished counties to request waivers that would allow them to hire applicants without teaching licenses. 

A from the nonprofit advocacy group TNTP found that roughly 4 percent of Arkansas teachers were uncertified, more than double the national average. In 30 districts, uncertified employees made up 10 percent or more of the teaching workforce. 

Gema Zamarro Rodriguez, an economist at the University of Arkansas’s Department of Education Reform, said she believed the pay bump included in LEARNS could make the profession substantially more attractive. That increase — effectively lifting the starting teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000 — would improve the earnings of nearly half of all Arkansas teachers. 

What’s more, “those teachers are not uniformly concentrated in the state; they are mostly concentrated in …shortage areas” in and around the state’s Delta region, Zamarro said. “I think increasing salaries could be positive, and it’s really going to affect the areas that need it more.”

Gov. Huckabee Sanders is pushing for several other workforce incentives, including the addition of 12 weeks of paid maternity leave. But those inducements are paired with more controversial measures. The administration has thus far been short on details, but a proposed $10,000 bonus for “good teachers” seems to open the door to a merit pay system that could prove unpopular with rank-and-file instructors. 

Another change would be much less ambiguous in its effects: the repeal of , a law that requires schools to provide notice and due process to teachers before termination of their employment. Zamarro said the law’s elimination, along with of pay-for-performance schemes in school settings, gave her some pause about the plan’s possible consequences for attracting and retaining teachers.

“I think the overall increase in pay is positive, but there are some other components in there that I worry might have the opposite effect.”

Division on ‘education freedom’

But the policy shift that will draw the most scrutiny is the governor’s effort to extend school choice to every Arkansas family through the provision of what her administration has dubbed “education freedom accounts.” 

Typically referred to as education savings accounts, the school choice vehicle disburses some portion of the state’s per-pupil allotment to parents for their use, whether for private school tuition, tutoring, or other instructional costs. A clutch of Republican governors have pushed to establish ESA programs already this year, and Arizona’s universal eligibility is seen as the “holy grail” in conservative policy circles. 

Arkansas already features for private school choice: a direct voucher program that enrolls about 700 students with disabilities, as well as a tax-credit scholarship for low-income students to offset the cost of private tuition. The new accounts — which should be one of the most expensive items in a package estimated to cost $300 million — would be reserved only for needy families in 2023–24 before becoming available to all students by 2025–26. 

The potential shock to education finances, which could draw both students and funding from traditional schools, has already drawn criticism. Gardner, whose organization has warning public officials against “[creating] inequity with our public education dollars,” said they would likely not lend their backing to any legislation that included an ESA plank.

“We may be supportive of other things in the bill, but because of this ‘education freedom’ component, we couldn’t be supportive overall,” Gardner said. “It’s just going to be so detrimental to our public schools that we feel it’s important to stand up against the bill.” 

In one of the reddest states in the country, GOP opposition would be necessary to sink the idea. But that might not be as unlikely as it sounds: In 2021, a bill that would have widened access to the existing voucher system , with Republicans accounting for most of the “no” votes. One legislator, Republican Rep. Jim Wooten, said the legislation could act as the “final nail driven in public education in this state.”

In an email, Wooten said that, if passed, the new omnibus proposal “will forever change the landscape of education in Arkansas — at the expense of public education. Every dollar lost to school choice is a dollar lost to educating…over 400,000 deserving students.”

Some found it notable that the school choice provisions were linked to a roundly popular pay increase for teachers. With federal COVID aid swelling budgets, red-state governors have increasingly been willing to court teachers with raises, even as they simultaneously pursue contentious policies like vouchers or classroom content restrictions. The LEARNS plan includes a thus-far unspecified ban on what is sometimes called critical race theory, and at the press conference announcing its arrival, Huckabee Sanders vowed to “never subject our kids to indoctrination.” 

Other Republicans road-tested the approach, including Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah, who just last month. But the Republican archetype for this strategy has been Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who committed significant new funding to public education over the last few years while clashing with educators over curriculum, parental rights, and the participation of transgender students in girls’ sports. 

Newly appointed Arkansas Education Secretary Jacob Oliva after a long stint in Florida, where he helped carry out DeSantis’s vision for public education. In about the LEARNS plan with Little Rock news station KTHV, he argued that if an overwhelming number of students used their “freedom accounts” to switch to private schools, “we need to have a hard, serious conversation about why parents are choosing other options.” 

The University of Arkansas’s Zamarro said that the poor performance of the state’s schools demanded action, but that the sheer scale of the governor’s reforms also called for careful evaluation.

“This is a state that needs to move forward and do something for kids. But how these things are going to be implemented will be key. I’m not sure there’s another state that has done so many of these things at once, so it’s going to be very important to track what is happening and whether it’s working.”