A new report from Arkansas Appleseed Legal Justice Center finds that Arkansas's investment in K-12 public education is significantly below the national average. Bobby Howard, the organization's executive director, joined Ozarks at Large's Matthew Moore in the Bruce and Anne Applegate News Studio Two to discuss the findings. He started with a simple question: Is the state of Arkansas providing an adequate education to all school children on a substantially equal basis? Based on the data, he says the answer is clearly no.
Bobby Howard: What we found was really kind of alarming. We knew what to expect going into some of the report work that we were doing. We knew that public school funding in Arkansas is anemic, to be generous, but we didn't know exactly how bad it was. What we found that was pretty shocking was that to meet the national average and to keep pace with some of our southern regional peer states, we would have to increase our per-student public school funding in Arkansas by about 30%, which is a massive amount of money. There's this narrative in the state of Arkansas that our public schools and our public educators are failing the students of our state. And the data that's in this report doesn't support that narrative at all. The narrative that the data in this report supports is that our state's policymakers are failing our public schools. It's unreasonable to expect an anemically funded public institution to produce learning outcomes that keep pace with national averages and southern leaders when we're not putting our funding where our needs are.
Matthew Moore: Let's kind of look at this 30% number. There's a gap between peer states and where we are in Arkansas. Where do we see that in a concrete way?
Howard: When we say that our public school funding needs to be increased by 30% to meet the national average or to catch up to other southern peer states, we're not just asking for a pile of cash to throw into a bonfire. That $4,000 per student more that we need to be spending on public education — what does that represent? It represents more teachers so that we can have smaller class sizes. It represents functional HVAC systems. It represents roofs that don't leak. It represents more special education teachers and instructional aides — 85% of superintendents across the state, when surveyed, say that we need more special ed teachers and instructional aides. It represents bilingual instructors, bilingual career counselors. It represents more resources for English language learners and for students who attend districts where there's a really high percentage of free and reduced lunch enrollees. What that money does is it represents services that aren't currently being provided to students across the state. When we say that our schools are underfunded relative to the national average or to our regional peer states, really what that means is that our students disproportionately are not getting the resources that they need to be successful in the classroom. When you look at learning outcomes statewide, the numbers always exist in an aggregate, so they're always averages. And if you want to improve statewide learning outcomes, the very best way to do that is to go to those students who are at the very bottom. You go to those students who are struggling the most and get them the resources that they need. And across the country, that's always students who are struggling with disabilities, students who need more mental health resources, language learners, and students who qualify for free and reduced lunch. We know the types of interventions that are required to improve those students' learning outcomes, and we know what those interventions cost. When we're asking for more dollars per student, really what that is is targeted, evidence-based resources — things from summer reading programs to prevent summer reading loss, to after school programs, to pre-K. We know what works better in other states than our current model, and we know that if we had more money, we could do it here in Arkansas.
Moore: So why doesn't the legislature want to spend the money?
Howard: It's really expensive. We have about a $600 million budget surplus this year. To increase public school funding by just $1,000 per student per year — which is about a quarter of what we know we need to increase it by to meet the national average — we have about 470,000 students. We're talking about almost $500 million. So the investment that we're not making in our public schools is massive. One of the things that there will be a reckoning with here in the next year is there's this ongoing push to phase out the state income tax, to eliminate income tax revenues — the pitch being to make Arkansas more tax friendly, more business friendly. The problem with doing that is, when you start shaving off $100 million here, $100 million there, not only are you going to not increase your per-student public school funding, you're going to fall behind in all these other service areas. We already know we're going to struggle with SNAP administrative costs. We already know we're looking at Medicaid enrollment drops. We already know we're falling behind in real dollars for public school funding. If they keep pushing these austerity measures and keep pushing these income tax cuts and corporate tax cuts, we're just not going to have the money that we need to offer all of these various other services. The states that are doing better in public education, the states that have better public education learning outcomes, are the states that are making that investment and who understand that they're really purchasing a certain kind of future for their state. We're hopeful that we can get through to some of our policymakers and sell them on that — that it's not just throwing money into a black box and hoping for better learning outcomes. You've got to pull certain levers to secure better futures for kids.
Moore: Is there a way to have that conversation around an investment in taxes as an investment in Arkansas's future? If we want better Arkansans, we want to keep Arkansans here within our state borders — that a better investment in public education has documented evidence of that occurring.
Howard: I think that's right. Depending on the data that you look at, somewhere between 93 and 95% of kids around the state still choose to go to public schools. Ninety-three to 95% of Arkansas families are public school families, and they're proud of it. It's a sense of local identity. So making an investment in public schools is making an investment in basically all children in the state of Arkansas, and then down the line, you're making an investment in basically the entire workforce of the state of Arkansas. A lot of the energy behind pushing these tax cuts — it's not by any means a dumb rationale. You do need to have a pro-business tax code, and you do need to have a regulatory environment that can support business growth. All of that is true. But the businesses that are skipping Arkansas to go to some regional peer aren't skipping Arkansas because their taxes are too high or because we have too much red tape. We have one of the friendliest regulatory environments in the history of the modern world, and we have the lowest effective tax rate in Arkansas in basically state history. Businesses aren't skipping Arkansas because we don't have a pro-business fiscal environment. They're skipping Arkansas because our public schools aren't adequately educating our children, because our hospitals are failing and going out of business, because our infrastructure is crumbling, because we don't have enough pre-K slots, because we don't have enough long-term care facilities for mom and dad. Cutting taxes doesn't solve any of those problems. The only way you solve those problems is by making serious investments in the future of our state.
Moore: Do you worry that the zero-sum game of either cutting taxes to be perceived as more business friendly comes at the cost of better investments in infrastructure and public education?
Howard: It does. And it has, sort of invariably, over the last 10 years, as they've chipped away at the corporate tax, as they've chipped away at the income tax. We've seen real restrictions on resource availability. Now, the good news is Arkansas's economy is growing. And as inflation has done its thing over the last four or five years, for good or for bad, state revenues have gone up. So you can understand how there would be some energy behind cutting taxes. Revenues have grown. Maybe we're collecting too much tax revenue from the people of Arkansas, with affordability being such a problem. Maybe we need to give some of that money back to people. Everybody understands the argument. The good thing, though, is that Arkansas's economy — unless the whole country is in a recession in six months — is going to continue to grow. The corporations who are here are successfully growing state revenues. If they would just leave the tax rate alone, if policymakers just wouldn't touch it and allow Arkansas's economy to continue its kind of normal, ordinary growth over the next couple of years, we'd be able to fund this stuff. We'd be able to make serious investments in our K-12 system, and we'd be able to fund pre-K and childcare. But yes, as every year they cut taxes, some other set of services gets restricted. And it's not just the education services that go, although they do tend to go quickly because they're the biggest pot of money on the table — it's easy to cut out of them. It's other stuff too. The governor presented her budget to the state legislature last week, and it's 3% greater than last year's budget, which basically tracks with inflation. The problem with that is they added about $200 million for private school vouchers to that budget — it makes up the bulk of that 3% increase. So if you've got a state budget that's tracking with inflation, but the only real increase was this massive voucher expense, that means that in real dollars, every other state agency is tightening its belt. Every other state agency is either making cuts or preparing for cuts. And you can only do that so many times before you really start losing critically needed state services. We're not talking about cutting luxuries. We're talking about people getting cut from the Medicaid rolls, whether we're going to be able to adequately administer our SNAP services, and then of course school funding. These are really important services that the state of Arkansas needs to be a healthy, pro-business environment.
Moore: What pushback have you gotten from your report? What have you heard from folks who don't necessarily disagree with you writ large, but say, I don't know if I follow what you're saying there?
Howard: The good thing is public schools in Arkansas are still wildly popular. Everybody loves at least their public school. They are proud of their local public schools. It's just really hard not to be proud of those heroes that are teaching the kids, and it's really hard not to be proud of the kids. The main pushback that we're going to get is that because the schools are so longitudinally underfunded, catching up and getting them in shape, getting them on pace with our regional peers is going to be very expensive. So it's just sticker shock. But it's really important, as we go into fiscal session, as the state considers its budget and as we go into what might end up being a special session — and there will be advocacy to cut taxes — it's really important that everybody understands that getting public education right isn't cheap. Getting learning outcomes out of our public schools that can keep pace with learning outcomes that are nationally competitive or even regionally competitive — you can't do it on the cheap. It's like buying off-brand Oreos because they cost less and then being surprised that they taste different. You paid less for public school — you're not going to get the outcomes of a regionally or nationally or globally competitive school district somewhere else if they're making the investment and you're not willing to make that same investment. The main pushback is just fiscal — we've got to figure out how to pay for these things. And the pushback isn't local. The pushback isn't the moms and dads in these communities who want their kids to go to really well-funded public schools. The pushback is really among policymakers who are having to make really hard decisions about where to put money and how to pay for other things that are important.
Moore: Do you believe that any incremental improvements matter? You show that there's a 30% gap here — is 5% enough to really be substantial and noticeable? How much has to happen before we really notice that we are improving?
Howard: Better is better. Anything that's better than the current spend should be welcomed and celebrated. Just to give you a simple example — one of the things that we cover in our report is that our per-student funding model designates something like $375 to a school district to educate an English language learner on top of what they get from the normal funding formula. It's called a supplement or a categorical fund. That extra $375 goes toward English as a Second Language instructional aides, toward translation services in the school districts for families, and some of the other wraparound services. That $375 amount is kind of shamefully low compared to other regional peer states. We could double that $375 and allocate to school districts something like $750 additional dollars for English language learners — still be at the bottom of the pack, but that's double the money for those services. That's more Spanish language teachers, that's more bilingual nurses, that's more Spanish-speaking special education instructional aides. Just across the board, you're increasing the number of services that you're offering to that group of students. And if you look at the learning outcomes for English language learners in the state of Arkansas, they're similar to the outcomes you'll see anywhere else in the country, although of course we are lagging behind. Only 10% of English language learners are scoring proficient in English, math or science — one in ten. If you want to improve learning outcomes for that kid and for the aggregate, a really high-yield, quick-return place to put money is this population of students, only one in ten of whom is scoring proficient on their standardized tests. How do you do that? You pay for more staff. You pay for more support services. You pay for more summer learning programs and more after school reading programs.
Moore: Thinking about working on the policy side, working with legislators in a supermajority Republican legislature — how do you have those sorts of conversations with people who do have some sway, some authority, some ability to say what we want to do here may not sound important, but it matters to Arkansans? How do you relay that sort of information to people who will actually be able to get it across the finish line?
Howard: Believe it or not — and I know there's been, over the last several years with the LEARNS Act and the school choice and school privatization push, some people have soured on public schools and the reputations of public schools — I think it's tempting for people to think that they're in the gutter, but that's really not the case. When you're talking to these legislators about public education, they're like anybody else in Arkansas. Ninety-five percent of them have their kids enrolled in public schools. Ninety-five percent of them are champions of at least the public school districts in their legislative districts. Most of the people that you talk to — and there are, of course, exceptions to this — believe in the project of public education in Arkansas and want Arkansas families to have access to quality public schools. And there's never been a working model in the state of Arkansas. We have never adequately funded our public schools in the state of Arkansas — to the extent that the Arkansas Supreme Court had to drag us kicking and screaming to a more equitable model 20 years ago. You've got the dialectical back and forth between advocates for public schools and advocates for more private options, and how the LEARNS Act has created access to all of these private options. And that's really a response to the underperformance of our public schools. But you can have these conversations with legislators where you peel back these layers and you can interact with some of the arguments. Eighty-five percent of the students currently enrolled in private schools were already enrolled in private schools before they had access to a voucher. Ninety-five percent of students in the state of Arkansas are still choosing an underfunded public option. No parent in Arkansas gets to choose between a well-funded public option and some other private option. It's just not a choice that any parent in Arkansas is able to make right now, because our state is not making an investment in our public schools. So the way we engage in this space is we kind of bracket the voucher conversation — it's just not the conversation that needs to be had right now. We need to rally policymakers and parents and advocates around these public schools that we can all agree are anemically funded. They're not getting the resources that they need to generate positive, excellent learning outcomes, even compared to some of our southern regional peers. Our school choice advocates cannot say, when they look at the data, that the choices private school families are making are a choice between a well-funded public model and a more private option. That's just not the decision that's being made. Those families are choosing between private options for their kids and a public education model that has never had the resources that it needs to adequately educate kids across the state.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
