The University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform celebrated 20 years of research and policy recommendations in 2025 to mark and catalog the changes made in education over the last 20 years. Harry Patrinos and Kristen Scott edited a book called "The State of Education in Arkansas," published by the University of Arkansas Press.
Patrinos is the department head and Scott is a research analyst. The book covers a wide range of topics, including teacher workforce, learning outcomes and even the concept of what they describe as human flourishing.
The story of change in Arkansas really begins before the Department of Education Reform. Back in 2002, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled the state's school funding system unconstitutional in the Lake View case, which set off a wave of educational reforms. Two decades later, Arkansas made another wave of educational reforms, this time with the LEARNS Act, passed in 2023.
Patrinos says he believes we are already seeing early signs of success from that legislation.
Patrinos: Especially the early reading, Right to Read Act, go directly to the heart of the problem. It's early learning that determines those subsequent test scores, graduation rates and the like. So if we get that right, a lot will happen.
So seeing progress on children receiving the early reading interventions, the screening, the tests and providing those learning plans will have immediate implications for subsequent test scores. And I think that would be the first step to getting back to where Arkansas was in 2013. Arkansas was above the U.S. average, at par with countries like Australia. Since then, scores have declined. The pandemic made it worse. We still haven't seen that major recovery yet, but elements of the LEARNS Act are exactly what's needed.
But a law is a law. What needs to happen is the implementation. Careful implementation, evaluation, tracking and fixing things as we go along.
Scott: We do know that it takes three to five years for implementation, and the LEARNS was, it's a very complex act. There are many different facets of it that can be challenging in and of itself. So I think communication has been important, not just from the state Department of Education, but also from supporting institutions like the University of Arkansas, but other higher ed institutions. And we've got co-ops around the state that are providing additional support for schools.
When you have so much change at one time, that can lead to confusion. It can lead to misinformation. For example, the district report cards came out, but the first year that they were released last year, in September of 2025, many districts were caught off guard. They were used to seeing school report card grades A, B, C, D, F as ways of helping parents to understand the quality of schools, but not districts. And so there was confusion about what went into those. What was the data? How was it measured? How was it going to reflect on a district?
So between last year and this year, there was a lot of training that happened, a lot of conversations that happened one on one, but also going into districts and supporting. Some faculty from our department provided that type of support and helped schools to be able to understand, this is how this is going to be measured. There were 10% of districts that did not have an A, B or a C rating. So that's a huge decline from last year.
Moore: I think one of the things that gets lost when our conversations about the LEARNS Act is that it's about a lot more than the Education Freedom Accounts. I think that's the thing that gets the most headlines. It's the thing that we talk a lot about. And I think in part because it's where a lot of the money goes. But I want to talk about that for just a moment, if we can, and the growth of school choice in Arkansas because of that specific element of the LEARNS Act.
And in the book, you point out that Arkansas' progress in school choice is substantial, but its success will depend on careful evaluation and evidence-based adjustment. When you talk to lawmakers, when you talk to people who are creating these laws and these policies and these ideas, what sort of policies are you advocating for that protects public schools while still empowering school choice?
Patrinos: The first one is evaluation. I think we need to know what is happening. Who's choosing schools? What schools are there? Are they choosing, how are they doing academically? Because a lot of this nationally and globally has been predicated on the idea that public schools are not performing at the level that we want. Perhaps there's a need for competition. Perhaps there's a need for catering to the individual learning needs. So giving people options.
And that's what programs like the Education Freedom Accounts do. Education savings accounts all over the United States are doing precisely that, because people do have choices. It's just that for many people, they're constrained by where they live and how much they can afford to pay for tuition. So the LEARNS Act, through the EFA, allows people to make those choices. But we need to evaluate those. They need to look at the data, make decisions on how to tweak the program to make sure it's effective at providing choice, first of all, and seeing some growth in learning outcomes.
Moore: Yeah, I think that's where we have seen a lot of pushback from people who are opposed to the school vouchers, is that there doesn't seem to be much of an appetite for evaluation of the learners in the private schools. When you talk about evaluations here, what I hear you say is evaluating who is going where and why. Are you advocating that private schools should also be doing evaluations for their students? And we should also be, it's hard to compare apples to apples in this situation because there's a lot of variables here. But is evaluations for students within the private school system something that you would advocate for?
Patrinos: I would advocate, I believe in accountability. I would advocate for full testing of the students wherever they go. Fortunately, the government in Arkansas agrees. So students that take the EFA and go to a private school will be tested. We'll have that information. We'll be able to evaluate them. So that's a very positive step. There's no skirting around. We'll know what the scores are in public schools. We'll know what the scores are for students that went to private schools.
Moore: Talk about assessing schools as more than just a grade letter or more than just a number on a test. But this flourishing idea, these other elements of education and being in school is also an opportunity for people to learn how to work together, learn how to problem solve, learn how to think critically, learn how to be bad at something. When you think about education reform in those elements, how do you think about that? How do you implement fun? How do you implement whimsy and joy in a school setting? Is that possible still?
Scott: Well, that's the chapter. Dr. Cheng captured one of the chapters in our book on flourishing. It really taps into that because it's the art and the science of teaching. Science is the science of reading. That's the nuts and bolts. This is how we teach a child to read. And if they struggle, these are the specific things we can do to help a child overcome.
The art of it is the connection, the human connection, the creativity. Seeing that, oh my gosh, you're good with your hands, give you an opportunity to show what you've learned in reading with your hands, or you sing, or you play the guitar, or you like to build things, give you an opportunity there. And that's the flourishing. That's creating the human with the creativity that we want all people to find in themselves, the best of them.
Patrinos: And to add to that, I think that those non-cognitive skills and the having fun, well-being go together. Students that are doing well academically are probably stronger than non-cognitive skills as well. And we are definitely moving into an era where other skills are being rewarded in the labor market, social skills, team skills, things that maybe weren't as important when we were in school. But now the labor market is demanding those things, and we need to find a way to include that in the school systems. And that's being done.
And I think that's part of what we need. But the test score is a minimum, I think, information point that we need so that parents can know how the school is doing. But there's other pieces of the puzzle that they need to figure out. And with the choice that they have now, hopefully they can find those models that fit best for their children.
Moore: Yeah. You think a lot about the future in your everyday work. You end the book with future reforms, and one I'd love to talk about specifically here, and I'll be selfish here, is to focus on early childhood care and education. I think it's pretty clear that getting kids learning sooner than later is proving to be productive. What are some policies or things we can think about here in the state of Arkansas to really prioritize early childhood care and education?
Patrinos: Oh, definitely. I think when it comes to public funds, the best investment you can make is to invest early in children, preschool and the like. And I think some of the specific things we need are early stimulation, health and nutrition to make sure that they're starting on an equal footing. Because once you start those differences, those initial differences grow over time.
So the closer we can bring people up in the early skills, the better they will do in school and life. We know this for a fact. The programs that work best start very early, and they are a combination of health, nutrition and early stimulation.
Scott: Well, and they're not part of all public schools, as you know, or maybe you don't know, maybe your listeners don't know, but the public schools that have preschools as part of them, they are grant-funded, which means they're not universal. And so moving toward a policy in Arkansas which would provide universal pre-K through a public school type model would be beneficial for all children. Because right now, since it's grant-funded, it only goes to the most needy. So my children might not be able to attend that because they might not qualify. And so that excludes some children.
Moore: Anything I missed? Anything that surprised you in the data? Anything that you unearthed as you went through it?
Patrinos: I just wanted to come back to your point about how long it will take and to give one example from a neighboring state, Mississippi. In 2013, Mississippi was last in the NAEP reading scores for grade four, and by 2019 they moved to 29th. And in the last NAEP, 2024, they're No. 7 in the country in grade four reading.
What did they do? They did early interventions from K to grade three to make sure that children were able to read before they got into grade four. And that program pays for itself. For every dollar spent, the benefits are $32 if we look at the lifetime of those learners. So we can get those results quickly, if four or five years is quick. But I think it is. And it requires an initial investment. It requires persistence and good implementation. And so far we're seeing that. So I think there is considerable hope.
Scott: Well, and I think finally, we want to say we have confidence in Arkansas teachers, Arkansas educators, not just teachers, all educators. We've done this before. We can do it again. Our department is half educators. So we've been in the classroom. We know what this takes.
And so coming together around looking at what the requirements are, but further, not just the minimum requirements. What can we do? Use that as a starting point and step up on that and go beyond like we have before. Back to where we were in 2011, 2012, 2013. So just the confidence boost that we can do at Arkansas.
Kristen Scott is a research analyst with the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. Harry Patrinos is the head of that department. They joined me in the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio Two earlier this week. The book, "The State of Education in Arkansas," is published by the University of Arkansas Press and will be available in November.
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