For AR Kids, the group backing for the Educational Rights Amendment, came up short on the signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot this November. The group has not disclosed how many signatures they collected. Similar efforts also fell short in 2024 and 2023.

The amendment, a response to the voucher mania unleashed by the LEARNS Act, would have required “identical academic standards and identical standards for accreditation including assessments of students and schools based on such standards” for any school receiving public funds. As it stands now, private schools that make use of vouchers play by different rules. The lack of accountability and transparency is particularly alarming to public school advocates given the robust evidence that students receiving vouchers actually wind up falling behind. Private school families get a de facto tax cut, but there’s no evidence that there’s any educational benefit.

Bill Kopsky, executive director of the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, which was on the committee backing the ballot campaign, broke the news to supporters today in an email, and promising to continue the fight:

We simply were not able to raise enough money to hire paid canvassers to supplement our volunteer effort for the education measure. That was the difference. 

Our volunteers and donors know that the Ballot Measure Rights Amendment had to come first. We wanted to do both at the same time, but if only one was going to get through, the Ballot Rights Amendment had to be the one. 

The Arkansas Legislature would simply have overrode the will of voters if the Education Measure passed before reforming the ballot measure process, with the dangerous new power to unilaterally re-write the Arkansas Constitution themselves without voter consent. The Ballot Measure Rights Amendment stops that power cold, returning the power to change the Arkansas Constitution back to Arkansas voters, and Arkansas voters alone. This had to happen first for any future citizen-led ballot measure to mean anything.

So here’s what’s next for For AR Kids and the Education Rights Amendment. Our campaign has educated more and more people about the fact that Arkansas is squandering hundreds of millions of our tax dollars a year on unaccountable, ineffective private school vouchers that don’t have to meet even close to the same standards as our public schools. 

We educated more people about what Arkansas’ education system actually needs to improve: strong minimum standards, accountability for public dollars, and access to quality special education, help for students in poverty, access to after-school and summer programs, and access to high quality pre-k.

We are going to keep building on that and building the For AR Kids movement! We are going to build that momentum to implement some of the principles of the Education Rights Amendment through the Arkansas Legislature.

If the Arkansas legislature doesn’t pass the reforms our students need, then we will be BACK AGAIN in 2028 with the Arkansas Education Rights Amendment–with an even larger base of support, more evidence that unaccountable private school vouchers fail to boost student learning, and more evidence about what Arkansas students need to actually improve their opportunities for success. 

We are not done, not even for a minute!

So please take a beat and absorb the stunning, essential success we’ve had in the courts and communities, to strengthen citizens’ access to the ballot measure process in Arkansas. 

Hug and thank a volunteer or donor. Mourn the fact that the Education Reform Amendment came short.

Then grab your sun hat and your shoes – let’s win the Ballot Measure Rights Amendment – and let’s build an even more powerful movement for quality education FOR ALL AR KIDS!

The Panel was also a member of the committee backing the effort to reduce the bureaucratic red tape that has made ballot initiatives such as this one expensive and subject to capricious interference from right-wing political opponents and their lackeys on the Supreme Court. While the education campaign came up short, the Arkansas Ballot Measure Rights Amendment collected more than 108,000 signatures, succeeding in the key first step to eventually making the ballot in November.

Kopsky celebrated that news, as well as a favorable ruling from a federal judge earlier this week, in his email:

What a week for Arkansans!

This week we had a couple MAJOR, HISTORICAL wins for Arkansas voters’ rights — tinged with some regret on education — but the good news is overwhelming.

Tuesday night Federal Judge Brooks struck down many of the anti-ballot measure laws passed by Arkansas lawmakers last session as unconstitutional restrictions on citizen rights. This is after an intense legal battle led by the AR ACLU, the Elias Law Group, and the Shults Law Firm. 

Today we turned in over 108,837 signatures for the Arkansas Ballot Measure Rights Amendment, blowing the doors off the minimum 91,000 signatures needed to qualify the measure for a 30-day “cure” period to collect MORE signatures. 

WE CAN KEEP COLLECTING MORE SIGNATURES NOW through early August. We met the minimum standard for signatures in over 60 counties. And we have signatures from every single one of Arkansas’ 75 counties. Our goal is to have 150,000 total signatures by the time the cure period ends in August.

These wins represent several incredible things:

• They were driven by over 400 Arkansas VOLUNTEERS who collected 35,000 signatures (5k more than our goal) and who donated more than 8,000 hours in the heat and cold, rain and shine, to make this happen! Our volunteers are the foundation of this success.

• These wins were driven by Arkansas donors, who financed the hundreds of thousands of dollars for litigation and campaign costs.

• This is the first time our strategy of advancing policy with a mix of volunteer and paid canvassers to build long-term power has been successful. Protect AR Rights was formed in 2019 to protect the ballot measure process in Arkansas and advance key issues, but so far we have mostly played defense. This is the first time we’ve used the strategy to advance something positive past the initial signature gathering stage. We still have a long way to go to the November election — but this is a major accomplishment.

• This means that Arkansas voters will likely have the opportunity to decide for themselves in November whether they want to protect their ballot measure rights, or give them away to the politicians and special interests trying to strip them away.

We still have a lot of work ahead, but today we celebrate and stand in awe of our volunteers: 8,000 hours of grassroots, citizen petitioning to get us here!

The education amendment likewise had 400 volunteers who donated a total of 8,000 hours, Kopsky said.

“We aren’t done with For AR Kids — it’s becoming a movement,” he said. “Our members will carry it into the coming legislative session to demand accountability — and then into the next ballot cycle, hopefully with more resources to support our volunteers.”