Arkansas parents asked if they want 'different racial mix' on school voucher form: report

A now-deleted version of the application for the Arkansas school voucher program for the 2025-26 school year offered parents the option of telling the state they were taking the money in order to find a more racially segregated school, reported the Arkansas Times on Thursday.

"Created by Gov. Sarah Sanders’ 2023 LEARNS Act, the vouchers give families nearly $7,000 per student to put toward private school tuition or homeschool expenses. And as of last week, they’re newly available to all K-12 students statewide," reported Austin Gelder. "By early that Monday afternoon, the voucher application was drawing fire on social media over a multiple-choice question that asked parents why they were applying. Among the nine options provided was this one: 'To access a different racial mix of students for my child.'"

Additionally, according to the report, a separate question that provided possible reasons for parents who took the vouchers the previous year but are now rejecting them, included, “Child did not want religious instruction,” “Child did not want to be held back a grade,” and “Child did not pass admissions test.”

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After receiving widespread criticism, the Arkansas Department of Education replaced the application with a new version that scrubbed the "racial mix" question as well as the options about religion and academic performance.

However, in just the six hours the original form was online before being revised, "110 applicants representing 129 students clicked to indicate that accessing 'a different racial mix of students for my child' was among the top three reasons they wanted a school voucher," the report noted.

School vouchers, a policy popular in Republican-controlled states, allow parents to take a public subsidy to enroll their children in a private school; Texas lawmakers are debating the creation of a similar system after Gov. Greg Abbott personally intervened in primaries to oust several Republican lawmakers who had opposed the plan in previous sessions.

Voucher systems are often billed as a means to let lower-income families escape failing schools; however, critics contend in practice, because low-income and rural areas rarely even have private schools to enroll in, vouchers are usually just a subsidy to wealthy parents already using private schools — often with religious instruction or high levels of racial segregation. As the Arkansas Times noted earlier this year, data show just 5 percent of families that took vouchers under the LEARNS Act were enrolled in a public school the previous year.