There’s an unspoken pattern in politics: the more innocent and “common sense” a piece of legislation is framed, the more dangerous it typically is. The “Educational Rights Amendment” of Arkansas proved this maxim perfectly.

In 2024, Arkansas teachers’ unions and other union-aligned organizations began pushing to add the misleadingly titled “Educational Rights Amendment” to the state constitution. They were selling the amendment as a way to “even the playing field” and ensure equality for all Arkansas students following what they deemed to be an unfair Education Savings Account (ESA) program.

The true impacts of the amendment, however, would be much more dangerous for Arkansans.

The Educational Rights Amendment posed a major threat to non-public schools and school choice as a whole in the state. The amendment also aimed to create government programs that would have cost the state billions (without any plan for how to cover the costs).

The Educational Rights Amendment was introduced with little fanfare or pushback in the public sphere. However, Opportunity Arkansas (OA) recognized its danger and began mounting a defense.

The Amendment

The Educational Rights Amendment was sold as a way to ensure all Arkansas students had access to a quality education. It did this by changing the standards for schools in the state, creating new pre-K and afterschool programs, and adjusting requirements for school curricula.

While these things might sound routine and benign, once parents and education experts started unpacking the details, it became clear that the law was much more dangerous for education freedom in Arkansas.

While there were many flawed and shortsighted elements of the amendment, one of its most significant was the requirement that all non-private schools receiving any state education funds comply with all testing and accreditation standards of public schools. This policy is designed to sound harmless and even “common sense” on its face; however, the realities are much more serious.

First, the state already has robust testing and accreditation standards for private schools. Second, it’s nearly impossible for a private school to operate in the same way as a public school. For example, the Arkansas public school accreditation standards require public school districts to employ a superintendent. If the Educational Rights Amendment were passed, private schools could conceivably be required to form school districts and hire superintendents just to comply with the regulation. The Arkansas public school accreditation standards also require each public school district to employ a general business manager responsible for district fiscal operations. Would private or charter schools be required to hire business managers? There are dozens of examples of bureaucratic requirements like these that make perfect sense for public schools but would be unaffordable or impractical for private schools (even the most robust and sought-after ones) to comply with.

Additionally, the Educational Rights Amendment would create universal Pre-K and after-school programs as well as financial assistance to students within 200% of the poverty level. Conservative projections estimated that these programs would cost billions with no funding plans in place. While these programs can be laudable, adding billions to the state’s annual costs without any plans for how to pay for it is undeniably irresponsible.

The proposed amendment also placed severe restrictions on the state’s fledgling ESA program, severely hampering the types of spending permitted with ESA funds deemed “non-essential,” such as art supplies or extracurricular activities. 

Fighting back

Almost immediately after the Educational Rights Amendment was introduced, Opportunity Arkansas saw the danger it posed to educational freedom in the state. However, despite the risk it posed for Arkansas students, there were very few (if any) voices speaking out against it.

Opportunity Arkansas became that voice.  

The first step was developing the most effective messages to reach families and taxpayers in the state. OA conducted messaging polling to learn what aspects of the amendment mattered most to Arkansans. Then, based on that data, the OA team started building digital assets, built a sub-brand, and launched a public campaign within a matter of days.

In addition to their own articles, videos, and materials, OA focused on utilizing earned media to amplify their message and get it into as many eyes and ears as possible. One of the most significant pieces of media was an Axios NWA exclusive piece on the launch. Axios is one of the more widely read political outlets in Arkansas’s fastest-growing region.

In total, OA’s message reached tens of thousands of Arkansas across the state.

Their video “Black Check” which focused on the unaffordable costs of the amendment, received nearly 50,000 views across the state. OA mailed a one-pager detailing the dangerous impacts of the amendment directly to 6,000 Arkansans. OA also created a microsite on the amendment, which received nearly 3,000 unique visits within its first few weeks.

In the end, the amendment died. Largely because of OA’s strategy and messaging, its sponsors failed to get anywhere near the number of signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. In total, the amendment advocates were 20,000 signatures (or 23%) short of what they needed.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the Educational Rights Amendment had the potential to decimate education freedom in Arkansas for generations. And had it not been for Opportunity Arkansas recognizing that threat and acting to stop it, it easily could have become law. Because of this incredible work, and this incredible victory, Opportunity Arkansas is the 2025 winner of the Bob Williams Award for Best Issue Campaign.

Too often, liberty advocates hear the stories about how school choice and education freedom is being attacked, restricted, and stripped away around the country. Fortunately for Arkansas families, Opportunity Arkansas exposed what the Educational Rights Amendment represented and ended it once-and-for-all.