At 8 a.m. on March 3, the Arkansas Department of Education opened up online applications for state-funded school vouchers for the 2025-26 school year. 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.

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.”

The uproar prompted what looks to have been a bit of a panic at the education department. By 2:11 p.m. that day, the “different racial mix” option had been scrubbed from the application.

The education department also deleted three possible answers to a series of other survey questions that touched on the sensitive subjects of race, religion and mandatory retention. In three separate questions, the application asked parents of kids who received a voucher in the current 2024-25 school year to identify their top three reasons for not using the funding, if applicable. Among the 13 dropdown answer options were the following: “Child did not want religious instruction,” “Child did not want to be held back a grade,” and “Child did not pass admissions test.”

https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2025/03/13/arkansass-school-voucher-application-asked-if-parents-were-seeking-a-different-racial-mix-of-students