News
Members of the Elaine Legacy Center are embroiled in a legal fight over control of the nonprofit
2+ hour, 56+ min ago (247+ words) Key figures in the Elaine Legacy Center are embroiled in yet another lawsuit, this time over control of the nonprofit organization that was founded years ago to memorialize the 1919 Elaine Massacre and do community development projects in a rural, poverty-stricken…...
Vouchers, vigilantes and vicious bears: The best and worst of Arkansas 2025
1+ mon, 3+ week ago (850+ words) If you pinned your hopes on 2025, we're guessing you're pretty disappointed." But an unexpected crack in the GOP supermajority also emerged around Gov. Sarah Sanders' mega-prison project in Franklin County. A cohort of bumptious rural Republican lawmakers rebelled, the governor's…...
Arkansas education department adopts most of plan to keep families, providers in child care industry
3+ mon, 1+ week ago (350+ words) The Arkansas Department of Education accepted most of a task force's recommendations to sustain the state's financial assistance program for low-income families to access child care. The department's announcement came in a letter to providers on Monday, two days after…...
Out-of-staters misrepresent Arkansas voucher data to champion school privatization
4+ mon, 2+ day ago (678+ words) Last week, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute published an article that celebrates Arkansas's private school voucher program. It offers up data from our state's annual "Education Freedom Accounts" report as reason to believe that Arkansas families are giving up on public…...
Vouchers for all: LEARNS expands to cover all students, and the road ahead is grim
4+ mon, 4+ week ago (1306+ words) The final tally at the August deadline was over 51,000 applications for the new school year. This huge new expense to the state budget will not have a measurable positive impact on student learning. So far, there's no indication vouchers are…...
Private school students make up 60% of those receiving Arkansas school vouchers, report shows
5+ mon, 1+ day ago (313+ words) Homeschooled children account for nearly 40% of those approved to participate in Arkansas" Educational Freedom Account program this school year, according to figures presented to the State Board of Education Thursday. Darrell Smith, assistant commissioner in the Office of School Choice…...
Arkansas’s ballooning prison system is the focus of DecARcerate conference this week
5+ mon, 2+ day ago (562+ words) DecARcerate, a nonprofit that works on prison and criminal justice reform in Arkansas, will host its sixth annual conference at the Holiday Inn Little Rock Presidential on Friday and Saturday. Open to the public, the conference will be from 10 a.m. to…...
Got questions about Arkansas's school voucher program? We want to hear them
5+ mon, 2+ week ago (202+ words) With the Education Freedom Account in its third year and with the number of applicants skyrocketing to over 50,000, we have a lot of questions. You probably do, too. We want to hear them. The full implementation of Arkansas's school voucher…...
Vouchers leave public schools behind
5+ mon, 2+ week ago (742+ words) The Little Rock School District is seeing declining enrollment, which has led to devastating school closures. This is largely due to the effects of vouchers and charter schools. When Booker Arts ... The Little Rock School District is seeing declining enrollment,…...
No to Wet Wipes, yes to dance class: What a school voucher can and can't buy under new 2025-26 rules
6+ mon, 2+ week ago (420+ words) New rules just dropped for Arkansas's "Education Freedom Accounts," aka vouchers, that take into account a new law passed this spring that limits what the funds can be used for." Voucher recipients cannot spend more than 25% of voucher funds on…...