Arkansas lawmakers promised universal school choice, but nearly half the state's counties still have no private school to choose from — and the government-education machine that benefits from the status quo isn't in any rush to fix it.
The state has committed $379 million to Education Freedom Accounts for the 2026-2027 school year and approved more than 54,000 applications, according to Arkansas Online. Each student can receive up to $7,208. On paper, access is universal. In practice, a family's actual options still depend on their ZIP code and their bank account — exactly the double bind the program was supposed to break.
The 10 private schools pulling the most voucher money sit in just four counties. Pulaski County accounts for six; Benton County has two; Faulkner and White counties each have one. All but two of those schools charge tuition well above the voucher amount, meaning families need a solid income on top of the state subsidy just to walk through the door. Then come the extras — textbooks, uniforms, fees, lunches — that the voucher doesn't touch.
Map every private school that accepts EFAs and the picture sharpens: the majority cluster in central and northwest Arkansas. Twenty-one of Arkansas's 75 counties have no private or microschool at all. Ten more have nothing but a microschool. Nearly half the state's counties lack a traditional private school option, Arkansas Online reported.
Benton County — the state's wealthiest, with a poverty rate of just 7.6 percent — boasts 17 private schools and seven microschools. Only three Arkansas counties sit below the national poverty average of 12 percent. Next door, Washington County adds another nine private schools. The affluent have choices.
Pulaski County offers 56 private and microschool options — but its poverty rate is double Benton's, and the county is 54 percent white and 37 percent Black. As Arkansas Online noted, private school counts across the South ballooned in the wake of school integration, and Pulaski County was no exception. The LEARNS Act of 2023 spurred further growth. Families in Pulaski have choices — if they can pay.
The Delta tells a different story. Lee County's poverty rate sits at 39.4 percent; it has one private school that takes EFA funds. Phillips County, at 35.8 percent poverty, has two. Woodruff, Monroe, Chicot, Prairie, and Ashley counties have no in-person private school options whatsoever. Sharp and Clay counties in the north, plus Little River, Howard, Pike, and Bradley counties in the south, also have zero EFA-receiving private or microschools, according to Arkansas Online. In all, 22 counties have no voucher-accepting private option, and 15 more have only one.
Meanwhile, federal money flows smoothly to the academy. John Carroll University in Ohio just landed a $3.2 million federal grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration — the largest in the school's history — to fund full-tuition scholarships for graduate students in clinical mental health counseling, cleveland.com reported. That follows a separate $1.05 million state award through the Ohio Behavioral Health Scholarship Program. More than $4.2 million in new funding to reduce the cost of graduate behavioral health education and place counselors in underserved communities. The stated mission: recruit and train professionals in Health Professional Shortage Areas and rural communities across Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginia.
The contrast is sharp. Federal agencies can find millions to subsidize graduate students at a private university with an online program targeting rural shortages. But in the Arkansas Delta, where poverty tops 35 percent and government schools are the only game in town, the teachers union lobby fights every effort to let families walk away — and the infrastructure of real choice simply doesn't exist.
Arkansas handed families a voucher and called it freedom. For thousands of parents in the poorest counties, it's a coupon to a store that never opened.
