Arkansas’ ESA Program Is Thriving: A Q&A with University of Arkansas’ Dr. Patrick Wolf on a New Comprehensive Annual Report

The following is an email-based Q&A with Dr. Patrick J. Wolf, Professor of Education at the University of Arkansas’ College of Education and Health Professions.

Dr. Wolf coauthored a new report this month on Arkansas’ Education Freedom Accounts program, which found the program had a “strong second year” with growth in participation and encouraging indicators on student performance while remaining “fiscally modest” relative to the state’s K-12 budget and spending. His co-authors are Daion L. Daniels, Alison Heape Johnson, and Dr. Josh B. McGeee.

We reached out to Dr. Wolf with a handful of questions to which he generously responded. That conversation is below.

Paul DiPerna: Big Picture. Based on your new report analyzing Year Two data from Arkansas’ Education Freedom Accounts (EFA) program, what do you see as the most important takeaways or milestones for policymakers, advocates, and families?

Dr. Patrick J. Wolf: “To borrow a title from a Who album, The Kids are Alright. The data signals that students are thriving in this school choice program. Enrollment increased by 157% from the first to the second year and by at least 227% from the second to the third year, based on preliminary counts.

Students with disabilities continue to be over-represented among the participants, yet participant test scores average well over national averages in both math and reading. 

DiPerna: Growth Factors. EFA participation growth is accelerating.  What dynamics — policy design, outreach, or demand — do you think are driving the surge?

Dr. Wolf: “The first year, the program was narrowly targeted to students with disadvantages, and funds could only be used for private school tuition and fees. So, the first year, it functioned as a targeted school voucher program. In the second year, more paths to eligibility were added and homeschoolers could qualify, since the funds could be used for a variety of educational services and supports from multiple vendors. As the program allowed for greater customization, it appealed to a broader set of K-12 students.

At the start of the third year, all school-age students in Arkansas are eligible and nearly 10% of the students funded by the state are in the EFA program. The desire of parents to select the best educational environment for their children clearly is driving this expansive growth, and the universal eligibility and flexibility in how the funds are used are facilitating its expansion, especially into the homeschool sector.

A third factor is that supply is responding to demand — as the population of registered private schools and microschools has grown in Arkansas the program has expanded. Parents have more choices now than they did two years ago.”

DiPerna: Family Engagement. Retention among families and schools is remarkably high. What can that tell us about satisfaction and stability in the EFA program? What might still need attention to keep families engaged?

Dr. Wolf: “Nearly all families are having a positive experience in the program. The Arkansas Department of Education has developed application, transaction, and renewal procedures that are easy for parents to navigate even while ensuring the program’s integrity. The state also contracted with a nonprofit school choice ‘navigator’ to coach families through the process of selecting schools and education vendors.

In the second year, about three-quarters of the students used their EFAs to support private schooling. Parents are clearly happy with the education that their children received through the diverse set of 126 private schools in the program this past year. The renewal rate for the Education Freedom Accounts from the second to the third year was a phenomenal 91 percent. The high renewal rate is especially encouraging because it suggests that these students can experience the benefits of a sustained and consistent school choice experience without the disruption of frequently switching schools. I suspect that the school navigator component has helped greatly and will be used to support families going forward.”  

DiPerna: Large Marketplace. With more than 2,000 approved service providers, are there signals or other indicators you see about building and maintaining an accessible and high-quality marketplace of education services?

Dr. Wolf: “Parents want lots of options, good information upfront, and a purchasing platform that is easy to navigate. The ADE and its contractors have provided that, to parents’ great satisfaction. The message from the detailed purchasing data is that parents are spending EFA dollars on core educational products and services. For the homeschoolers, that means educational supplies, à la carte course tuition, curriculum, and lab equipment. Much smaller proportions are being spent on enrichment activities, therapies, transportation, etc.”

DiPerna: Fiscal Perspective. The report estimates that the program represented about 2.6 percent of the state’s K-12 budget while serving roughly 3 percent of students. How do you believe policymakers should interpret those numbers when evaluating sustainability and scale?

Dr. Wolf: “The program is serving two different types of students: Those who switched from public schools or would have attended them absent the program and those who already were in private/homeschools or would have attended them regardless of the existence of the program. The state saves money on the former group of ‘switchers’ and ‘diverters’ but is newly subsidizing the second group of ‘always would have been private/homeschooled’ students.

Since the cost of the subsidization is greater than the savings from switchers, the program does represent an extra cost to the state at this point. Still, the cost is below the total expenditure amount because of switcher savings.

One could justify funding for existing private/homeschool students based on the state’s commitment to support universal education for children starting at age 5 and continuing until at least to age 16. In this view, the state’s role is to ensure that every school-age child has access to an education, regardless of the setting — whether district-run public, public charter, private, or homeschool. The funding structure reflects this universal commitment while acknowledging differences across sectors: district-run schools receive the highest per-pupil funding, public charter schools receive somewhat less, and private and homeschool students receive the lowest level of support. In short, the state is now extending educational funding to all students, not favoring one sector over another but fulfilling its broader responsibility to educate every child.

That means that, as the public school sector gets smaller in size, and the private/homeschool sector gets bigger, supporting the education of all students will cost the state less because the public subsidy is smaller for students who choose private and homeschooling.

For the current year of universal program eligibility, the preliminary enrollment numbers suggest that the state will spend 7.5% of its total K12 funds on the nearly 10% of the Arkansas student population that is in the EFA program. That indicates that the program is cost-effective and sustainable.”

DiPerna: Comparative Insights. Based on your national research through the School Choice Demonstration Project, how does Arkansas’s EFA initiative compare with similar education-savings-account programs in other states?

Dr. Wolf: “First, we know more details about the Arkansas program than any other universal ESA programs, due to the clear annual reporting requirements in the statute. I think the results of our report also validate the requirement that education providers administer tests to the EFA students but can choose the test that best reflects the educational program the student is receiving. This ‘testing freedom’ element of the Arkansas program facilitates the reporting of student outcomes relative to national norms without introducing bias by mandating that they take the state test that is aligned to the state curriculum and not the curriculum they are learning.

For ESA programs like Arizona’s, which doesn’t require student testing, we don’t know how well the students in the ESA program are doing educationally. For ESA programs like Iowa’s that require that students in the program take the state test, I fear that educational providers will abandon the distinctive elements of their educational program that make them attractive to certain families and instead start to take on the identity of the traditional public schools – in effect, reducing educational options. This process of ‘institutional isomorphism’ is a real danger if choice students must take the state test.

The other danger is that private providers won’t change their distinctive approaches and the choice students will have to suffer through a test that is not based on what they are learning and will produce biased outcome scores. ‘Testing freedom’ is the way to go.  

Also, private schools are required to be accredited or in the process of accreditation before they can serve EFA students. That provides quality control at the front end. From that point on, parents provide additional quality control by voting with their feet, the most powerful form of school accountability that involves a ‘stampede to quality.’

The Arkansas law prohibits government officials from enacting any rule or regulation that would impinge on the identity and autonomy of private schools. With that protection from government over-reach, nearly all private schools in Arkansas are participating, giving parents a rich set of school choices.”     

DiPerna: Future Outlook. Looking ahead, what metrics or indicators will you be watching most closely to gauge the EFA program’s long-term success?

Dr. Wolf: “I’m interested in seeing if the number of students switching out of public schools into the program increases going forward, as the program becomes better established and better known, or if it decreases because public schools respond positively to the competition from the choice program.

I’m also interested in seeing if the program continues to disproportionately enroll students with disabilities, even as it reaches universal eligibility.

Finally, I’m interested in studying the overall effects of the program on student achievement, attainment, and character outcomes.”

DiPerna: Implications for States. You’ve led the University of Arkansas’s Department of Education Reform and the School Choice Demonstration Project for many years. How can your department’s work, and its partnership with the Arkansas Department of Education, serve as a guide for how states can be transparent, timely, and insightful when publicly reporting about ESA programs?

Dr. Wolf: “Our researcher practitioner partnership (RPP) has been terrific. The state has established effective systems for collecting and consolidating program data, but they are short on trained analysts to turn those data into descriptive program findings. We have the expertise and the staffing to take the raw data and discover what it says about the program.

Our team produces independent reports, easing the Department’s workload and letting them focus on program implementation. Everyone benefits: policymakers and the public receive an independent, data-rich account of how the program operates and who it serves; the Department gains an analysis and reporting collaborator that helps fulfill its statutory reporting requirements; and our research team gains access to unique data to address key policy questions about school choice. It’s a genuine win–win–win.”  

DiPerna: Equity and Access. Student eligibility is now universal. How is the program balancing that universal access with attention to students who have special needs or come from disadvantaged backgrounds?

Dr. Wolf: “Disadvantaged students received the advantage of first movers. The first and second years of the program, only students entering kindergarten were universally eligible for an EFA. Students in all other grades had to qualify based on some marker of special need.

The most common qualifying condition those first two years was being a student with a disability. Students with disabilities are flocking to this program and represented 36% of enrollment the second year. So, I think the lesson is, offer school choice to every student but give disadvantaged students first crack at it so they can secure the placements they need in a school of choice before opening it up to everyone.

I think the fact that EFA funds can be used for school-related transportation also helps to promote equity and access. With flexibility in how EFA funds can be used, more families can build the educational experience that serves the special needs of their children.”

DiPerna: Assessment Results. EFA students averaged above the national median in both math and reading. How do you interpret those results? Are there cautions (or contexts) that policymakers and advocates should keep in mind?

Dr. Wolf: “The scores reveal, quite literally, that the average student participating in the school choice program is performing at a level substantially higher than the national norm. It doesn’t tell us how much of that performance is a result of the students receiving a better education and how much of it is due to more able students enrolling in the program.

The fact that, in its second year, the program continued to target students with markers of special need — with over one-third of participants having disabilities — and yet the group still performed above the norm suggests that these outcomes are not simply the result of student selection. These students are genuinely thriving. As the album title says, The Kids Are Alright.”