Arkansas public school students posted sharp gains in reading, math, and science proficiency over three years, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced, calling the results a "major breakthrough" driven by the sweeping education overhaul she signed into law in 2023.
Overall student proficiency climbed from roughly 35 percent in 2024 to 42.2 percent in 2026, a rise of more than seven percentage points across all grades and subjects on the state's new standardized exam. The gains cut across every major academic category, with math proficiency jumping from 36.4 percent to 44.2 percent, science from 35.6 percent to 44.0 percent, and English language arts from 33.8 percent to 39.5 percent.
Sanders framed the data as proof that conservative education reform works, and challenged other states, red and blue alike, to follow Arkansas's lead.
The LEARNS Act, passed in 2023 with Republican backing, was the most far-reaching education package Arkansas had attempted. It raised the state's minimum teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000, a 39 percent increase, as AP News reported at the time, and created performance-based bonuses to reward effective classroom instruction.
It also boosted literacy support, funded school safety initiatives, and banned the teaching of critical race theory, gender identity, and sexual orientation content in public school classrooms. The omnibus approach was deliberate: Sanders packaged teacher pay increases alongside curriculum restrictions and a new school-choice voucher program, daring opponents to vote against the whole thing.
Democrats objected. State Representative Tippi McCullough told AP News at the time that the bill's voucher component amounted to "a systematic dismantling of the public school system in Arkansas." Teachers' unions and progressive critics warned the law would drain resources from public schools and impose ideological constraints on educators.
Three years later, the proficiency numbers tell a different story.
Sanders's office released data showing that 42.2 percent of Arkansas students met proficiency standards in 2026, up from 36.9 percent in 2025, a jump of more than five points in a single year. The share of students performing at the lowest levels dropped from 27.3 percent to 23.1 percent over the same period.
Third-grade reading, often treated as the single most predictive measure of long-term academic success, rose from 36 percent in 2024 to 43 percent in 2026. Students in kindergarten through second grade exceeded 50 percent proficiency in nearly every subject and grade level, a result the governor's office highlighted as evidence that early-grades investment is paying off.
Jacob Oliva, Secretary of the Arkansas Department of Education, said in a press release from the governor's office:
"The LEARNS Act was a bold, innovative, and comprehensive approach to improve education. It was built on research, urgency, and the desperate need for change. These scores prove that listening to teachers, administrators, and parents wasn't just valuable but also essential. The plan is working. Arkansas students are reading, learning, and benefitting."
All of the proficiency data comes from the governor's office. No independent verification has been reported, and the specific exam used, along with how its proficiency thresholds are set, has not been publicly detailed in the available reporting.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Sanders made clear she sees the results as more than a state-level win. She positioned Arkansas as a template for Republican governors, and issued an open invitation to blue states as well.
"I'm hopeful absolutely that red states will use what we're doing here as a blueprint, but I also hope that blue states will look at the success that you're seeing in places like Arkansas, Mississippi and others and try to follow suit because we want all kids to do well."
Sanders also pushed back on the idea that education reform is inherently partisan. "Seeing kids achieve and do better and be successful, that's not a red state or blue state issue," she said. "That's something everybody should care about."
That framing is notable given the political context. Democrats and teachers' union leaders have spent years targeting red-state education policies, from Florida's parental-rights legislation to Arkansas's own curriculum restrictions, as culture-war overreach. The argument was always that conservative reforms would hurt students. The Arkansas data, at minimum, complicates that narrative.
It also arrives at a moment when prominent Democrats continue to attack Republican governance on family and education issues, often without acknowledging the policy results coming out of red states.
The LEARNS Act didn't stop at teacher pay and curriculum. It created "Education Freedom Accounts", a voucher-style program that gives families up to 90 percent of the state's per-student public school funding to use at private schools or for homeschooling. During the 2023, 2024 school year, that figure equaled roughly $6,600 per student.
Sanders has since expanded eligibility. The Washington Examiner reported that the governor opened the program to children of veterans, military reserve members, first responders, and law enforcement officers for the 2024, 2025 school year. Her budget also proposed an additional $100 million in education funding to support the broader LEARNS Act framework.
"Parents want and deserve options," Oliva said of the expansion. "The EFA program provides that, and now additional children will be eligible for those opportunities."
The voucher component remains the most contested piece of the law. Critics warned it would siphon money from public schools. But the proficiency gains reported across public school students suggest, at least so far, that public school performance has not collapsed alongside the introduction of school choice. Whether the two trends can coexist long-term is an open question, but the early returns favor the governor's argument.
When Sanders introduced the LEARNS Act, the opposition playbook was predictable. Union leaders said it was too much, too fast, too ideological. Democratic legislators said the voucher program would gut public education. Progressive commentators said banning critical race theory was a distraction from real academic improvement.
The implicit bet was that conservative education reform would fail, that students would suffer, teachers would flee, and the whole project would become a cautionary tale. That bet has not paid off. Math proficiency rose nearly eight points. Science rose more than eight. The students at the bottom of the performance ladder shrank as a share of the total.
This pattern is not unique to Arkansas. Sanders herself pointed to Mississippi, which has drawn national attention for literacy gains after implementing its own reading reforms. Red states that have paired higher expectations with structural reform are producing results, and the critics who predicted disaster have been slow to reckon with the evidence.
The broader political picture reinforces the point. Even some Democrats have acknowledged that their party has misjudged what voters actually want, on education and much else. When parents see proficiency scores rising and school-choice options expanding, the abstract argument that conservative reform is dangerous becomes a harder sell.
The Arkansas results deserve scrutiny as well as credit. The proficiency data comes entirely from the governor's office and the state education department. No independent body has publicly verified the figures. The specific exam used to measure proficiency has not been named in available reporting, and it is unclear whether the 2024 baseline scores and the 2026 results were measured on the same assessment, a detail that matters when evaluating year-over-year gains.
How "proficiency" is defined, and who sets the threshold, also remain open questions. States have wide latitude in designing their own assessments and choosing cut scores, which means cross-state comparisons require caution.
None of that erases the trend. A seven-point gain across all grades and subjects is meaningful by any reasonable standard. But the full picture will sharpen as independent researchers examine the data and as longer-term outcomes, graduation rates, college readiness, workforce entry, come into view.
Meanwhile, the political landscape in red states continues to shift. Republican leaders across the country are proving willing to challenge institutional inertia, whether in education, redistricting, or governance more broadly. Arkansas is one data point in a larger pattern of conservative state governments acting boldly, and producing outcomes that make the usual criticisms harder to sustain.
Sanders, for her part, is not shy about the stakes. "We know that raising the bar, providing those resources and support for our students, for our teachers, for our superintendents makes a difference," she told Fox News Digital. "We've got a recipe here that's working and absolutely hope it not only changes the conversation but frankly changes the system, changes the culture and education."
That is the kind of confidence that comes from having numbers to point to, and from watching the people who predicted failure scramble to explain why the failure never arrived.
Democrats spent years insisting that conservative education reform would leave kids behind. Arkansas kids moved forward anyway. At some point, the people who got the prediction wrong might consider updating the theory.
