More than 1,000 Texarkana-area students used Arkansas school vouchers last year
Annual Education Freedom Account report filed with lawmakers Friday shows participation ranging from 2.8 percent of students in De Queen to 17.8 percent in Lafayette County, and four local private schools took in $2.6 million
TEXARKANA, Ark. — About 1,060 students in Texarkana-area Arkansas school districts used state-funded Education Freedom Accounts to pay for private school or home schooling in 2025-26, according to a report filed with the Arkansas Legislative Council on Friday.
The Lafayette County School District had the sixth-highest participation rate of any district listed individually in the report. Its 85 account holders equaled 17.8 percent of all publicly funded students living in the district. The statewide rate was 8.7 percent.
The Texarkana Arkansas School District had the most participants in the area, 262, or 6.7 percent of its publicly funded students.
The district said it cannot tell how many of those students came from its schools. Its enrollment fell by 115 students this fall, continuing a decline of about 100 students a year that began a decade before the accounts existed, and it expects to lose about $923,000 in state foundation funding next year as a result, Superintendent Lloyd Jackson’s office said in written responses to TXKtoday.
The accounts, created by the 2023 LEARNS Act, were worth $6,994 per student last year, 90 percent of the state’s per-pupil foundation funding. The 2025-26 school year was the first in which every Arkansas family was eligible, and statewide participation tripled to 44,524 students.
The report was written by the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform in collaboration with the Arkansas Department of Education. It was released this month and submitted to the Legislative Council on Friday as one of the agency reports lawmakers receive under state law.
[COMMENT NEEDED: Hope Superintendent Jonathan Crossley on the 175 participants in Hope. Lafayette County Superintendent Richard Estes Jr. on the district’s 17.8 percent rate. Trinity Christian School head of school Thad Todd (verify current) and Garrett Memorial Christian School on enrollment growth and tuition.]
Lafayette County and Blevins lead the area
The report counts each participant in the public school district where the student lives, then compares that number with the district’s own enrollment plus the EFA students. By that measure, two small Hempstead and Lafayette county districts had the highest rates in the region, while De Queen had one of the lowest rates in the state.
District EFA students Public enrollment EFA share of publicly funded students Lafayette County 85 392 17.8% Blevins 51 316 13.9% Hope 175 1,982 8.1% Fouke 84 987 7.8% Texarkana 262 3,636 6.7% Genoa Central 72 1,182 5.7% Mineral Springs 21 360 5.5% Nevada 24 422 5.4% Nashville 92 1,715 5.1% Prescott 43 831 4.9% Ashdown 62 1,220 4.8% Horatio 20 599 3.2% De Queen 68 2,333 2.8%
Foreman, Dierks and Spring Hill each had fewer than 10 EFA students and were not listed individually.
Taken together, the 13 districts had 1,059 EFA students and 15,975 public school students, a participation rate of 6.2 percent. That trails the state as a whole. The highest rates in Arkansas were in Marvell, at 33.4 percent, and the Pulaski County Special School District, at 26.4 percent. Magnolia’s rate was 13.6 percent.
De Queen’s 2.8 percent ranked 167th of the 177 districts listed.
Four local private schools took in $2.6 million
Four private schools in the area enrolled EFA students last year, and the state paid them a combined $2.58 million, up from about $470,000 the year before at the three schools whose prior-year totals are listed.
Trinity Christian School in Texarkana, Arkansas, a ministry of Trinity Baptist Church at 3107 Trinity Blvd., received $993,649 for 139 EFA students. The school reported 180 students in all, meaning 77 percent were on the program. In 2024-25, it had 71 EFA students out of 200 and received $243,932.
Garrett Memorial Christian School in Hope received $808,492 for 161 EFA students out of 180 enrolled, or 89 percent. A year earlier, 61 of its 185 students were on the program, and the school received $110,180.
Legacy Academy in Lockesburg received $510,971 for 71 EFA students out of 100, or 71 percent. In 2024-25, it had 35 EFA students out of 150 and received $115,623.
South Arkansas Christian School in Lewisville received $271,030 for 49 EFA students out of 54, or 91 percent. The year before, 21 of its 50 students were on the program.
Together, the four schools went from 188 EFA students in 2024-25 to 420 in 2025-26. Enrollment totals are projections the schools reported to the state when they applied, according to the report.
For comparison, the largest EFA school in the state, Shiloh Christian School in Springdale, received $10.7 million for 1,537 students.
The report also tracks whether EFA students stayed put. At Trinity Christian, 82 percent of EFA students from 2024-25 returned to the same school and 86 percent stayed in the program somewhere. Garrett Memorial retained 74 percent at the school and 89 percent in the program. Legacy Academy retained 89 percent on both measures, and South Arkansas Christian 81 percent and 86 percent.
How local EFA students tested
Every EFA student must take either the state ATLAS test or a nationally normed exam. The report gives each school’s average national percentile, where the 50th percentile is the national midpoint.
Trinity Christian students averaged the 66th percentile in math and the 64th in reading. Legacy Academy students averaged the 50th and 47th, South Arkansas Christian the 45th and 46th, and Garrett Memorial the 39th and 48th. Statewide, EFA students in private schools averaged the 60th percentile in math and the 63rd in reading.
The report cautions that the scores do not show whether the program caused any change in achievement, because families choose whether to participate.
Other local payments
The report’s list of schools and vendors paid through the accounts includes several other Texarkana-area names:
- Faith Assembly of God-Texarkana Christian Academy, $182,421. The academy does not appear in the report’s list of participating private schools. [VERIFY with the Education Department whether it is approved as a microschool or a service provider.]
- St. James Day School, $140,993. The school is on the Texas side of Texarkana. State rules require participating schools to offer classes in Arkansas, with an exception for out-of-state schools that served students under the former Succeed Scholarship program and keep only those students. [VERIFY with St. James and the department how the payments qualified.]
- Sevier Tutoring, $22,575.
- University of Arkansas Hope-Texarkana, $8,865. College courses are an allowed expense.
- NETX Brain Training, doing business as LearningRx Texarkana, $5,000.
The state’s approved-school list includes two private schools in Texarkana and one each in Hope, Lewisville, Lockesburg and Nashville, plus three microschools in Texarkana. Microschools are small programs, often run by churches or groups of parents, that register separately from private schools.
What it means for public school budgets
The report does not break out how many participants in any district left a public school, so it does not show how many of Texarkana’s 262 EFA students had been enrolled in the district the year before.
The district does not know either. Families who leave to home-school must file a notice of intent, but they are not required to say whether they are using an account, and the district generally does not learn when a student enrolls in a private school, Jackson’s office said.
“We do not know nor track which students that leave are receiving EFAs,” the office said.
Texarkana’s enrollment dropped by 115 students this fall. Because state foundation funding is based on the prior year’s enrollment, the district estimates the loss will cut about $923,000 from its state aid in 2027-28. The district said it has lost about 100 students a year for the past decade, a trend that predates the accounts, and that it will keep cutting expenses to balance its budget.
The district said it is responding by promoting its programs on social media and other media and by exploring alternatives to the traditional school model, an effort it calls the Academy of Choice and Exploration. Over the next few weeks, it plans to ask home-school and school-choice families what drove their decisions.
“We welcome choice and our aim is to be the best choice for our students, families, and community,” the office said.
Statewide, 25.8 percent of EFA students in grades one through 12 had attended a public school in 2024-25, up from 12 percent the previous year. Because Arkansas funds districts on the prior year’s enrollment, the report says the effect of those departures will show up mainly in 2026-27 state aid.
The report estimates the switchers will save the state $54.1 million to $61.9 million in public school funding after the state’s declining-enrollment adjustment, against $307.6 million committed to the accounts. It puts the net cost to the state at $245.7 million to $253.5 million.
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the report shows the LEARNS Act is working, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Oct. 9. Bill Kopsky, director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, told the newspaper the report was not independent of state education officials and presented the data selectively. Patrick Wolf, a University of Arkansas professor and one of the report’s authors, said a follow-up study would try to separate the program’s effect on test scores from the backgrounds of the students who enroll.
Looking ahead
For 2026-27, 65,036 students applied statewide and 55,649 were approved, according to the report. The base award rose to $7,208.
On the Texas side of the state line, Texas opened its own education savings account program this year. TXKtoday reported in March that Bowie County had four approved private schools, none offering a full high school program.
What the report covers
The 2025-26 Arkansas Education Freedom Accounts Program Annual Report is dated September 2026 and was written by Misty Gallo, Alison Heape Johnson, Joshua B. McGee and Patrick J. Wolf of the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform, in collaboration with the Arkansas Department of Education. State law requires the department to report on the program to the Legislative Council each year.
District figures come from the report’s Appendix A, which matches each participant to the district where the student lives. School figures come from Tables 6 and 7 and Appendices C and D. Prior-year figures come from the 2024-25 annual report.
Sources: 2025–26 Arkansas Education Freedom Accounts Program Annual Report (Arkansas Legislative Council Exhibit H.3(a), Oct. 16, 2026); 2024–25 Arkansas Education Freedom Accounts Program Annual Report; Texarkana Arkansas School District superintendent’s office, written responses to TXKtoday, Oct. 16, 2026; Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, Rules Governing the Arkansas Children’s Educational Freedom Account Program, 6 CAR § 35-107; Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Oct. 9, 2026.
Prior-year report: https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/e0/8d/0c6713ea46b0ba061dadc55d6804/updated-2024-25-arkansas-efa-voucher-report-from-ua-and-ade.pdf