Don't Sign the Anti-LEARNS Petition (Part I)

If you are an Arkansas voter, you might have already been asked to sign a petition to “put LEARNS on the ballot.” If you haven’t been asked already, you likely will be soon. This is the first report in a three-part series to inform registered voters 1) what those peddling this petition hope to accomplish, 2) what LEARNS is and what Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders hopes to accomplish with its implementation, and 3) exactly who you are following if you do sign this petition. (Part II, Part III)

Our goal is to mobilize citizen volunteers to overturn or veto the LEARNS Act ~ CAPES Website


Before you place your signature on that petition (it seems odd there is no trace of the petition's text online), it is important to note that LEARNS is now law. What the petition actually seeks is to put the REMOVAL of LEARNS on the ballot. The folks circulating the petition and pushing this agenda are not asking for an opportunity to vote for LEARNS. They are looking for you to try to overturn LEARNS.

It is also important to know what LEARNS is and what it will do. The propaganda pushers behind this petition drive claim they are for public education and students. But their real goal is to prop up the current system–a public education system that fails the vast majority of Arkansas students. Only 35% of Arkansas third graders read at grade level according to 2022 state mandated standardized tests. Barely more than one third of Arkansas kids served by the state’s pre-LEARNS public education system. 


According to 2021-2022 data from the state Department of Education’s School Report Cards, only 41.3% of high school seniors enrolled in college the fall after they graduated. Of those, 70.1% required remedial courses in college. It is not a stretch to infer that half or more of Arkansas high school graduates are not adequately prepared to succeed in college. 


This is the system these petition pushers seek to protect from the LEARNS boogeyman. It is a system that has left Arkansas consistently ranked near the bottom of state education systems in the US. The most recent US News and World Report rankings put Arkansas’s PK-12 education system at 39th, in the lowest 25% of US states.


These are the realities of the public education system the petition peddlers are seeking to protect and preserve. That is exactly what they are trying to do–preserve and protect an education system that fails far too many bright young students.

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