Arkansas families pulled $309.4 million in state education funding out of the public school system this year and spent it at private and religious schools of their choosing—and the teachers unions are sounding the alarm because their monopoly is cracking.
The state's Educational Freedom Account program, created by the 2023 LEARNS Act championed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, went fully universal this school year. No more caps, no more eligibility gates. The result: roughly 44,100 students received accounts worth $6,864 each, and the money followed them out the door.
Arkansas Online reported that just 10 private schools collected more than $60 million of those funds in 2025-26, with Shiloh Christian School in Springdale pulling $10.6 million and Little Rock Christian Academy close behind at $10.4 million. Nine of the top 10 were religiously affiliated. About 28,100 students used their accounts for private school tuition; another 18,500 directed the money toward homeschooling or microschools.
April Resima, president of the Arkansas Education Association—an affiliate of the National Education Association—framed the outflow as graft. "The fact remains that our public tax dollars are being spent to make private school owners wealthy instead of taking care of our public schools, where 90% of our students attend," she told Arkansas Online, calling it money that lines "the pockets of private school owners."
Notice the framing: when parents spend their own allocated education dollars at schools that reflect their values, the union calls it profiteering. When the same dollars fund a public system where union-negotiated contracts dictate spending, that's supposedly "taking care" of students. Follow the money. The NEA's revenue depends on public school payrolls. Every student who leaves is a dues-paying member the union loses.
There are legitimate questions. A University of Arkansas report on the 2024-25 year found that the majority of account holders were already enrolled in private schools or homeschooling before the program—meaning early adopters weren't necessarily fleeing public schools so much as getting the state to subsidize choices they'd already made. And the Arkansas Department of Education has yet to publish the legally required annual report for the first year of universal eligibility. ProPublica also reported that roughly 120 new private schools have opened in Arkansas since LEARNS passed, and at least one—the Delta Institute for the Developing Brain—had a documented child abuse incident.
Those are accountability problems worth watching. But the union's core complaint isn't about oversight. It's about control. For decades, the public school monopoly meant parents had no exit. Now they do, and they're using it.
The question going forward is whether Arkansas will enforce the transparency the law already demands—or whether the same establishment that lost its funding stream will find a way to claw it back.
