Arkansas LEARNS Lawsuit Needs a History Lesson
Plaintiffs misread the past at their peril
Recently, sections of the Arkansas LEARNS Act were challenged in court. The plaintiffs in the case make wildly inaccurate and inappropriate claims that, if believed by the court, will undermine the law’s goal of improving the educational outcomes for students throughout Arkansas.
The LEARNS Act passed in 2023 was Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ first piece of signature legislation. The law is expansive in scope, touching on education funding, teacher pay and parent choice, among many other items. One key element of the LEARNS Act is the creation of the Arkansas Children’s Educational Freedom Account Program. The EFA Program allows parents to utilize state-allocated education dollars to craft the educational experience that best meets their children’s needs.
The lawsuit seeks to eliminate the EFA program, and adding insult to injury, requires the roughly 4,800 students already in the program to return to the public schools from which they fled and to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege.
At the most basic level, the lawsuit improperly links recent education reforms to a world before Brown v. Board of Education. The landmark U.S. Supreme Court case ruled racially segregated schools as unconstitutional.
In Brown, Black children were denied the ability to attend schools their parents chose based on the color of their skin. Black parents were denied the right to direct the education of their own children. By ruling that segregated schools were unconstitutional, the court in Brown opened the schoolhouse doors to allow parents’ choices to come to life. Unfortunately, many cities and states didn’t immediately change their practices. In fact, many public school systems in states across the South didn’t integrate schools until the 1970s.
Modern reform efforts like the Education Freedom Account Program are descended from the very impulses that drove parents to seek relief in Brown v. Board of Education.
In the 1960s, my friend Virginia Walden Ford and her twin sister Harrietta were among the first 130 students chosen to desegregate the Central High School in Little Rock. That alone would have cemented them in the education reform history books. However, Virginia’s passion for ensuring all students receive a quality education never faded. Eventually, she championed the creation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, one of the nation’s first private voucher programs.
Because of her leadership and commitment to working with lawmakers of all stripes, thousands of low-income students, mostly Black and brown, in Washington, D.C., gained access to schools that were previously reserved for the wealthiest members of the D.C. community. Students from Washington’s poorest wards found themselves in school with the children of presidents, but the magic in the program wasn’t getting to rub elbows with well-to-do classmates.
Instead, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship was a reminder that children from all backgrounds deserve a spot in educational settings that best meet their needs and goals. Given the history of choice programs and the personal experiences of champions like Ford, comparisons of segregation to Arkansas’s Education Freedom Scholarship Program (and, by extension, other choice programs like the one in D.C.) are flimsy at best and disrespectful at worst.
Finally, one of the most shocking elements of the lawsuit is the request for families to repay the scholarship funds they received. (Nary a word is mentioned about whether teachers should repay the $180 million in bonuses and pay increases that were authorized by the very same law.) Remember, by the law’s design, many of these students are zoned to the lowest-performing schools in the state. Aside from having scant legal justification, this “remedy” highlights the plaintiff’s disregard for all parents’ right to direct their children’s learning.
Some of the plaintiffs are parents, presumably parents who are satisfied with their public school options. To those parents, I say congratulations. You hit the figurative lottery. In a state where fewer than 3 in 10 children read at grade-level proficiency, finding a conventional school that works must be considered a gift. Having received such a present, these parents should not block others’ entry into the land of education freedom.
Students have suffered academically over the last few years because of school lockdowns. The last thing families need is a reversion to an education system that treats them and their children with contempt. We must preserve the increased freedom and opportunity gained over long decades of progress. We must save the Arkansas LEARNS Act.
This article was originally published at Arkansas Money & Politics on Monday, June 24, 2024.