Arkansas governor touts test-score gains as universal voucher program expands

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders is pointing to rising statewide ATLAS test scores—from 35% to 42% proficient on the same assessment over three years—as evidence that the state's universal Education Freedom Account (EFA) voucher program is working. The state's own data show that these improvements came from public schools serving the vast majority of Arkansas students, not from the voucher program itself. As of the 2025-26 school year, nearly 37,000 students were approved for EFAs out of roughly 480,000 public school students statewide, yet the governor's announcement did not parse scores by sector or track the academic trajectory of voucher recipients. This framing is a familiar tactic: take a legitimate public-school gain and retroactively credit a separate, politically charged program that has not been independently evaluated on student outcomes. Meanwhile, the voucher program faces documented risks—including inadequate oversight of participating private schools and potential for strain on public-school funding if growth outpaces appropriations. The administration's own press release links public-school gains to the broader LEARNS Act (a policy package that includes teacher pay raises and literacy coaching) but then subsumes those results into a voucher narrative. This conflation obscures the actual policy lever at work: sustained investment in public instruction, not privatization.