Hope for students

Plan to give all resources, freedom

When I started fighting for my son to get a quality education in a safe environment in the 1990s, I couldn’t have imagined that the fight for others like him would be continuing nearly 30 years later.

But after all this time, we finally seem to be getting somewhere. This week, Sen. Breanne Davis and Rep. Keith Brooks introduced the LEARNS Act, a plan to make Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ promise to give every student in Arkansas the resources and freedom to learn at any school their parents choose a reality.

As the daughter of educators— including the first

Black assistant superintendent for personnel in the

Little Rock Public

School District—and one of several Black students chosen to continue the desegregation of Arkansas high schools in the mid-1960s, I know this will be a turning point for children in our state.

I saw it happen with my youngest son, William. Like so many Black and brown boys in inner-city schools, the education system wrote him off—his speech problems made him incapable of learning, they said. He knew he didn’t matter to his school, and he fell into a downward spiral. William turned to the streets, where he sought protection from drug dealers.

But a neighbor saw something in him and offered us a partial scholarship so William could attend a private school. As a single mother, I was willing to do anything I could to keep him safe and help him learn, so I took a second job to pay the rest of the tuition.

My family’s story has a happy ending: William went on to excel in his new school and later in life. But many kids aren’t so lucky. Like in the days of segregation, children’s access to learning is too often limited by the neighborhood in which they live. For decades, I’ve worked with parents across the country to change that, and in the last two years, we’ve seen lawmakers across the country create new programs and increase access to existing ones at a record pace.

Now that same hope is on the horizon for Arkansas students. Sanders’ plan would empower all families with both the freedom and the funds to send their children to a school that will meet their unique needs. If the locally assigned public school has written them off like it did with my son, or just isn’t a good fit for any number of reasons, parents may move them to another learning environment that will prepare them for a successful future. Children who are succeeding in their local district-assigned school can remain, and their parents can rest assured that school-choice programs like the one the governor has proposed financially benefit public schools. As an added advantage to public schools, the plan would also raise starting teacher salaries from one of the lowest in the nation to one of the highest.

Families who enroll their children in the Education Freedom Account program would receive 90 percent of the public funding set aside for their student (over $7,000 in this school year) to spend on qualified education expenses, like private school tuition or homeschooling curriculum. Ten other states—including Iowa and Utah, which both enacted new programs in January—offer these types of accounts to some or all students in their states.

Iknow from experience that having your child in the right school can not only be life-changing, but lifesaving. But you don’t have to trust me on this. Empirical research has shown time and again that students who participate in private school choice programs are more likely to graduate high school and attend college; achieve higher test scores; and are more engaged in their communities. Naturally, the parents of these children are also satisfied with the programs.

While my own experience at Central High School was far from easy, desegregation and steadfast parents allowed me to be educated in the best school in Little Rock, receiving a world-class education that prepared me to spend my life speaking up and advocating for children. It’s time to give that same opportunity to all Arkansas children.