On July 5th, the deadline for ballot initiative signatures came and went, and the people of Arkansas sent a clear message once again: They want education freedom.‍

The message came in the form of voters’ rejection of the so-called “education rights” amendment, which fell more than 20,000 signatures short of the needed threshold. Had it become law, the proposal would have sucked the life out of education freedom–a core component of the LEARNS Act–in all forms, including scholarship programs that help Arkansas kids with disabilities.

And while the effort’s screeching halt came as no surprise to those of us who have been paying close attention, talking to families and educators across the state, perhaps no one was more surprised than the welfare-for-all-creating, religious-freedom-stomping, private-school-takeover proponents themselves.

Indeed, they have spent the last 18 months telling any Arkansan who would listen that there is palpable anger from Mountain Home to Monticello about LEARNS, and about education freedom specifically. 

They told us all emphatically that three-quarters of Arkansans supported their plan.

And they told us their radical welfare expansions were “rights” that Arkansans desperately wanted enshrined into the state constitution, regardless of the costs (which they never disclosed).

Yet somehow they came up abysmally short, capturing the signatures of hardly two percent of the public, despite claims of momentum from their failed effort last summer. How?

They and their allies seem to have landed on two primary excuses: 1) Attorney General Tim Griffin “ran out the clock” by rejecting their initial ballot title submissions, and 2) They did not have any money. These excuses are quite flimsy, to say the least.

Yes, it’s true the anti-reformers raised very little money. But that seems more like a symptom than the root problem. After all, if there is such a groundswell of opposition to LEARNS, shouldn’t resources have poured in?

And the clock? Well it’s certainly not AG Griffin’s fault that the organizers waited so late to start the certification process; other initiatives were approved as early as October of last year. 

But even so, education petitioners actually had nearly three more weeks to canvas than casino petitioners. They even had more than twice as much time this go around as they did last year.

Yet after everything was tallied, they gathered less than half as many signatures as the casino amendment (69,968 and 162,181 respectively) and fell even shorter than their failed 2023 effort (77 percent of the needed signatures compared to 98 percent last year). 

No doubt this is not a positive trend for them, but it’s unreasonable to ascribe their shortcomings to AG Griffin or to a lack of time.

So what really happened? Because we’ve been assured ad nauseam that voters are clamoring for their pitchforks, ready to storm the capitol in outrage over LEARNS.

The most obvious answer is likely the correct one: The version of reality anti-LEARNS activists are selling doesn’t exist.

Arkansans have long supported education freedom which they have demonstrated at the ballot box, including when nearly two-thirds of voters supported Governor Sarah Sanders. This trend has not changed one iota since the passage of LEARNS; polling has also consistently shown broad support for education freedom. And now voters have twice rejected efforts to undercut LEARNS via ballot measure.

It’s time, collectively, to admit that the emperor has no clothes. There is no LEARNS backlash and there was never going to be because education freedom is working, Arkansans want it, and it’s here to stay.

And perhaps the leading opponents of LEARNS themselves are starting to come to grips: during this most recent campaign, they abruptly changed their messaging from LEARNS being “a piece of trash” (Steve Grappe, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, August 2023) to telling voters their proposal wouldn’t affect LEARNS or education freedom at all. Quite a shift indeed.

Of course this claim was untrue–dismantling LEARNS was the driving force behind their effort—but it became a core pillar of their pitch. Why? Because they knew that’s what voters wanted to hear; because they know Arkansans support education freedom.

Now it’s time for them to believe their own spin and do what they said they were doing in their new-and-improved messaging–leave education freedom alone.

For the good of all Arkansas children and families, these professional pot stirrers should put down their spatulas and work to ensure the success of LEARNS rather than continuing to try and undermine it.

Arkansans have spoken clearly and repeatedly: They don’t want a one-size-fits-all education system any longer. They don’t want the old status quo. And they certainly don’t want state control of private schools.

Instead, as they have consistently shown, Arkansans want more options and more decisions left in the hands of parents. They want more success stories like Eliza Cunningham’s, whose academic turnaround was recently chronicled in this paper’s pages. 

They want more opportunity for the next generation than they had. And by golly, they’re going to get it–because this is Arkansas, where “the people rule.”

Let education freedom ring!

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‍Nic Horton is the Founder & CEO of Opportunity Arkansas, a non-profit policy organization that is renewing the Land of Opportunity by simplifying government and solving generational problems. He is a fierce advocate of education options for Arkansas families. To learn more, visit OpportunityArkansas.org.‍

‍This piece originally appeared in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on July 14, 2024.