---

PODCAST | “Freedom to Learn:” Prioritizing People Over Paperwork

---

Arkansas Education Secretary Jacob Oliva on Education Freedom, Flexibility, & Funding.

Arkansas is streamlining the K-12 education bureaucracy, investing in educators, and expanding families’ options. Arkansas Secretary of Education Jacob Oliva recently joined Freedom to Learn to talk about the rollout and impact of the state’s transformative LEARNS Act. He explained how Arkansas expanded Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs) from targeted eligibility to universal access, and what it took to launch the statewide choice program that now serves about 50,000 students. Secretary Oliva also shared Arkansas’ federal waiver strategy to cut red tape and return decision-making power to the state.

During our Freedom to Learn conversation, Secretary Oliva mentioned that “34 cents of every dollar we received from the feds we spend on compliance.” What a ridiculous waste of taxpayer dollars. Listen to the episode or read the transcript below to find out what Arkansas is doing to reduce compliance costs, consolidate fragmented funding streams, and shift the focus from micromanaging inputs to holding schools accountable for results.

Please follow or subscribe to Freedom to Learn on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

---

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You began your career as an elementary teacher for students with special needs. What inspired you to become an educator?

Jacob Oliva: Most people who go into what I consider to be the greatest profession of all professions probably can think back to a teacher who had a great impact on them. I remember even at an early age watching or having relationships with teachers who made a difference in my life and saying, “How cool would it be to grow up and be someone like that who can make a difference in other people’s lives?”

I remember Ms. Hammond, our kindergarten teacher, would put us all on a little carpet, and she would sit in a chair and read books to us. She would hold the book up and read the story upside down so that we could see the pictures. And I remember saying, “I need to learn how to read upside down so I can read these stories to my brothers and they can see the pictures.” Even at an early age, I really enjoyed sharing and trying to inspire others.

I think about the lessons I learned from my band director. I’ll never forget the big saying on the back of the wall, “Early is on time, on time is late.” And on time, even when the bell rang, his baton was going up, and we were playing music. To this day, I hold myself to that same core value: I don’t want to be late. We have to be on time. We have to be early. Teachers help shape who we are, and wanting to be like them and having role models and mentors in your life and being able to do that for the next generation of students seemed very compelling.

Before we talk about the LEARNS Act and the implementation of Education Freedom Accounts in Arkansas, tell us about the state’s “Returning Education to the States” waiver application.

Jacob Oliva: We haven’t officially submitted our application to the feds. We have to go through a process. We’ve put a proposal together on how we’re going to reclaim education in Arkansas, and we put it out for public comment. Once the public comment closes, we have to take comments and feedback into consideration and see if there are going to be any updates or changes. If there’s nothing significant, we will be in a position to formally send that request or waiver to the feds by next month. If we have to do a lot of technical changes because we got some good feedback, we may have to repost it for another round of public comment, because we want to get it right.

Anytime you’re shaping policy at the state level or even at the federal level, if you’re not involving stakeholders, teachers, superintendents, parents, and school board members, you’re going to miss out.

We put work groups together and asked, “If we want to unhandcuff ourselves from some of the unnecessary bureaucracy and the red tape that the feds implement on us or require us to participate in, what would we ask for and what would be a real waiver request?”

Under Governor Sanders’ leadership, we’ve shaped some really good policy on how we’re going to improve schools. We had a robust, comprehensive package called Arkansas LEARNS that touched everything from early learning, K-12, career and technical education, parent empowerment, and some higher ed components. In that, we built a whole new kind of accountability system.

We feel pretty good that our accountability system, how we identify A-F schools and student populations, and measure learning in those schools, is better than what the feds require through CSI and TSI comprehensive support and targeted support. We don’t want to do both models. In fact, when a lot of people think about waivers, they think that we’re asking to do less, or not be held accountable, or for laws to be waived. We’re not asking for that. We’re actually asking to use our system, because it has more accountability, and we’re going to identify more students in schools that need targeted support and intervention.

What we want is some bureaucracy and red tape [lifted] off those dollars that we get—Title I, Title II, Title IV, Title III—and the flexibility to be able to support districts and schools. Can we blend and braid funds in a manner that’s common sense?

Currently, the way we have to write all of our funds and requests is very siloed. It’s very fragmented. It pits people against each other and creates this culture of, “I’m the Title IV coordinator. This is my money and you can’t touch it unless I tell you how to spend it.”

We don’t want to get pots of money and say we can’t use it to fund initiatives and students. Students don’t show up at school in different pots of buckets identifying what they need. So when we’re looking at putting together a waiver request, it’s very simple. We need less bureaucracy. We need less red tape. We need to support innovation, not stifle it.

We created what we call a “common application” for state and federal funding. Every one of these pots of money requires a common needs assessment and a bunch of data to support why you need this money. The needs of students who are struggling to learn check a lot of boxes. Why do I have to write 17 common needs assessments, 17 different plans? Can we simplify this process and make things easy?

I think the biggest thing is, if we can have some flexibility and get that block grant mentality from the feds and be able to support districts in that mindset, make applications easier, make bureaucracy and red tape a lot lower or eliminated, then we can actually direct more dollars to supporting students.

The current system right now is so bifurcated and cumbersome that we, as an agency, have to hire full-time staff to meet federal reporting requirements. School districts have to do the same thing.

We did an analysis and we found that roughly about 34 cents of every dollar we received from the feds we spend on compliance. We could cut that in half through alleviating some of the ridiculousness that we’ve got to jump through. If 34 cents gets reduced down to 15 cents, that’s more dollars we can get the districts and teachers to support students in classrooms.

Our theory of action is pretty simple. We’re not asking to waive laws or lower requirements. We’re actually asking to increase requirements, allow us to use our system that’s a common sense approach to supporting schools and districts, and take a common sense approach to allocating resources and support to our struggling learners and families.

This makes so much sense. And some of these points that you’ve made are built into this waiver application: districts “often face fragmented priorities, inefficient processes, and multiple timelines in the grant process, making it difficult for leaders to plan for and spend funding in a coherent way that best addresses student needs and drives outcomes.”

Jacob Oliva: We’ve created this mindset or this culture that Title I money can only be spent on Title I initiatives. And once that pot of money is dried up or the reserves or the set asides or all the requirements, then it’s done. But improving and supporting students with Title I doesn’t blend over to Title IV in supporting the overall learning experience of students, or even Title II on how we’re going to provide professional development and growth for teachers.

Some of this doesn’t make sense because at the end of the day, we’re trying to invest in teachers. They make the greatest difference in improving student outcomes. Also investing in leaders — good teachers will follow a good principal anywhere, but good teachers will leave a bad principal overnight.

And then what do the students need? Do they need direct support through intervention, through tutoring, summer programs, extended learning opportunities? This isn’t that complicated. We’ve made it complicated because of auditing, monitoring, and compliance that people are so worried about.

We’ve made these applications and the distributions of funds so complicated instead of saying we believe in our professionals and the majority of our professionals are going to do what’s right. Instead of micromanaging everything from the input side of things, we want to hold you accountable for your outputs. So if we can give you flexibility on the front end to be as innovative as you need in a school district to support students and your community and working with families, we’re going to give it to you. But if we’re not producing results, that’s where we’re going to come in with oversight and compliance.

For decades, we’ve been trying to improve student learning and outcomes by micromanaging inputs. It’s not working. It’s a failed experiment. It’s a failed belief. We’re failing a generation of students. Let’s hold the adults responsible for improving learning through outputs. They’re on the front line every day. They have great ideas. They have great suggestions. Give them the flexibility and freedom they need to support students the way they feel that works best for them.

You mentioned that you all have consolidated 17 separate state and federal plans and applications. That’s one way to address the silo mentality. Culturally, what can be done about the identity that bureaucrats have that “I’m the Title I coordinator, or I manage the Title II funds”? Is there a way to break down the silos culturally within the existing structures?

Jacob Oliva: Anytime you’re rolling out initiatives, you always have your speed boats, your tug boats, and your barges. Strategy-wise, we look for those speed boat school districts that want to embrace this vision and mission, and we start working with them so that they can be successful. Like when you’re writing a common app, it’s never going to be perfect the first time when you’re trying to look at the data and all the provisions and statutory and federal requirements. So it evolves. You’ve got to bring these stakeholders in. But once you get the speedboat set up and running, then we target those tugboats.

This next fiscal year will be our third year with a common app, and we’ve improved it each year. Whether we’re looking at district plans or even school improvement plans within a district plan, they’re recognizing, “Wow, you’re telling me that if I fill this out this way, the way you look at state set-asides, the way we look at maintenance of effort, or some of the things that we don’t have the federal authority to waive, how we document and monitor,” if we can make it easier, they’re seeing the benefit.

When we’re saying, “We don’t want to lock you in that, ‘Title II funds can only be used for professional development’ if you need that to support extracurricular summer intensive intervention and training. We want to give you that flexibility.” And they’re coming back saying, “Wow, this actually makes sense.”

It’s a change. I know people that have been working in federal programs for two or three decades, and they’re really good at what they know and what they do. Asking them to think about how we want to monitor, what is application monitoring, desktop monitoring, on-site monitoring, what is a complete plan, what is a program—it’s a shift.

If you have an employee that’s 100% paid out of federal funds, the amount of paperwork that you have to fill out to prove that they actually worked on federal programs is so burdensome on these employees. We’re putting that on a waiver saying, “We’re not doing that anymore.” [They ask us,] “Are you saying that we don’t have to document all this?”, and when they’re hearing, “No, if you follow it this way, this is all we’re gonna monitor and ask and require,” you can just see this burden lifted off their shoulders, and that’s where that innovation gets sparked.

We want to put people over paperwork.

Can we focus on supporting students and families and reducing paperwork? Because that’s where we’re going to make a difference in these children’s lives. A student that needs extra support or intervention is not going to graduate from high school because the person that worked in that silo filled out the best paperwork and never had an audit finding.

What are we doing with these children to make sure that they graduate from high school ready to be enlisted, enrolled, and employed? If we can’t answer that question, then we’ve got bigger problems.

And you’re talking about all of the children who are enrolled in all of the options in Arkansas.

Jacob Oliva: That’s right. And at the end of the day, these are the students in our state. These are the families that we serve and we support. You know, if our students can’t go out into the community and be successful in whatever path or choice they have in life, then we’re not doing our job.

And my mindset is on whatever path works best for that family and that child is the path that we need to support most, whether it’s in a homeschool environment, private school, public school, charter school, magnet program, virtual school. There’s a pathway for everybody and when you can empower parents to customize the flexibility and options to make sure that their children’s needs are being met to their greatest potential, ultimately that’s a win for the state of Arkansas.

What were you all hoping to accomplish with the LEARNS Act, which passed in 2023?

Jacob Oliva: It’s a comprehensive roadmap to improving student outcomes. Ultimately, what are we looking to accomplish? It goes back to our students graduating from high school ready to be enlisted, employed, or enrolled. Are they being successful beyond our system? And it doesn’t matter what metric you look at for student performance or outcomes, Arkansas education is going to rank somewhere between 40 and 50, depending on what metric we’re looking at. And that’s been for decades. There is no reason that we can’t be number one. And when we started unpacking, why are we getting the outcomes that we’re getting when we’re making such a great investment into our schools and our classrooms? It became very, very clear that we had a broken system.

I always like to say bad systems beat good people every time. It’s not that we didn’t have teachers working hard, students excelling, and principals committing to their schools. Our system was misaligned. It was confusing. Nobody knew what to work on. We had standards and teaching expectations where teachers didn’t know what they meant. They didn’t know how to teach an assessment system that didn’t measure those standards that were a predictor of college career readiness. We didn’t give the results of those assessments back to schools until they were already halfway through the next school year, because everything was lagging. So ultimately, what did we do with LEARNS? We provided clarity and alignment.

We have made education and teaching so hard with all these federal and state mandates. We’re flipping to the other end of that spectrum that says, let’s make things easy for teachers and free them up to be innovative and work with students. And if we can do that, we’re going to improve those outcomes and metrics, but ultimately, students are going to be successful in life.

When I chunk up some of those big buckets of LEARNS, it starts with early learning. How do we make sure that early learning providers have the resources and support they need to improve kindergarten readiness? How do we define quality? How do we make sure that every family that wants to participate in early learning environments has an option to do so?

Improving third-grade reading scores is paramount in every district. Are we hitting a proficient level of reading in third grade as a state where under 35% of our third graders are proficient in reading? If you can’t read, it’s hard to succeed. School doesn’t become fun when you get into higher grades if you’re struggling with foundational literacy.

We invested heavily in professional development, high-impact tutoring, adding 120 literacy coaches to struggling schools to provide direct coaching and support for teachers.

We’ve invested in teachers, and we raised teacher salaries. We went from like 45th in the nation and starting teaching salary to the top five overnight. Every teacher starts in every district at $50,000. And many districts exceed that. We developed a teacher merit pay system because we want to recognize the teachers that are going above and beyond. We know that investing in teachers and leaders is a great investment in long-term outcomes.

We created additional career and technical education pathways. In fact, we required every high school the following year to have three career and technical education pathways that led to program completion. One of those pathways has to be off the state’s high skill, high demand, high wage list. And every school did that.

We’ve expanded concurrent credit opportunities and accelerated pathways beyond. But ultimately, a big part of it was that we empowered families. We believe in choice, and we created a program called Educational Freedom Accounts for families that want to exercise that choice. The public schools are probably going to be the primary choice for most students and families. So, we want that to be the first and best option. But if they’re not able to meet the students’ and families’ needs, those families need other options. We don’t want options just to have options. We want quality options. We want to make sure that if parents are exercising these options, they have confidence that those options are going to produce the same outcomes and expectations that they would in any other pathway.

Let’s talk about the implementation of the Educational Freedom Accounts. These EFAs are truly universal, right?

Jacob Oliva: We actually did a scaled-up approach. I was pretty new to the state in 2023, and I was like, “I want to meet with the folks in a school choice office.” And it was like, “Well, we don’t have one.” I said, “Wow, we’re starting from zero here, right?” So we were building out a whole program with like zero people.

Right, and you were coming from Florida. I used to lead the school choice office in Florida 20 years ago, and it existed before I got there. So you’re talking like close to 25 years of having a designated school choice office within the Florida Department of Education. That would be a culture shift for you.

Jacob Oliva: Yes, and there was a lot of work to do because we didn’t have any policies written around choice. We didn’t have an application. We didn’t have a website. We didn’t have a way to disseminate information. We truly were like, “We’re going to build the greatest program in the nation, as fast as we can, and get it right.”

It took us about three years to scale the EFAs to universal statewide. Year one, we targeted parents of students that were in an F school if they wanted to apply for an Educational Freedom Account to go to a private school, home school, or a neighboring school, and expand choice programs between districts. We had a cap in state law that limited the number of families that can choose a neighboring school. So we got rid of these caps and said, “We want choice to be truly choice and parents to be able to go to the school in the district that works best for them.”

We started with schools that were F schools, supporting families with special needs, and families that were part of our military and first-time kindergartners. It was a little bit smaller in year one, which helped us build the policies, timeline, and payments. I would like to tell you it was smooth and we never had any hiccups, but that would not be true.

With any program rollout, you’ve got to figure things out.

Jacob Oliva: We got it going, but we told everybody upfront, “This is new. We need you to be patient.” There’s going to be hiccups, there’s going to be unintended consequences. It’s not going to be perfect.

The first year out, we got a lot of good feedback, and we were able to course correct as the year went on, so that year two, we were able to expand it. Maybe you’re at a D or an F school. We included first responders. We included a new cohort of kindergarten and first graders. Participation increased the following year. More private schools joined on because they saw the world didn’t come to an end after year one for those initial private schools. And then, by year three, we wanted to make it truly universal and empower families. For the 2025-26 school year, participation has increased. In fact, we had to work with the legislature because we want to fully fund this program. And they’ve been very supportive.

What are participation numbers at this point?

Jacob Oliva: About 50,000 students. We’ve been on a three-year journey, going on year four. When you look at overall teacher satisfaction, we just had a nationwide survey come out, Arkansas teachers were voted number one as the most satisfied teachers, because we brought them to the table and said, “We’re going to empower you and get rid of this nonsense.” And they’re seeing a difference. We’re investing in things that make sense. School districts are embracing it. And I think they appreciate it because they had a seat at that table.

In fact, like when we passed the Arkansas LEARNS law, that was the big thing from the legislature because it required us to write 96 rules at the state department. That’s a lot of work. I said, “Well, we’re going to be open and transparent.” We established work groups and put out a call to anybody that wanted to be in a work group: “Send us your name. We’re going to filter through it and make sure everybody has a seat at the table.” In that initial response, we had over 1,000 teachers say, “We want to help.” Overnight, 1,000 teachers.

So, when we look at this journey in the last three years of what we’ve done to improve standards — new test item assessments, promulgate 96 rules, thought partners for how to redesign A-F letter grades to have confidence that it measured learning — we’ve involved over 3,000 educators in the state at some point throughout this process, whether they’re at the university level, district level, classroom level, retired, or going to school to become a teacher. We brought everybody in. That’s why I think we’re seeing such great and rapid results, because we’re building the right system around the right ideologies, and it’s only getting better.

As we wrap up, I tend to ask my guests to tackle the myth that bothers them the most, and they want to dispel. What myth do you want to tackle today?

Jacob Oliva: That’s a really good question. I always like to ask people, “How many branches of government are there?” Simple things. And everybody can tell you the three branches of government. Then I ask, “Where’s the Department of Education?” 80% of people have no idea. 80% of people think that the Department of Education is writing all these laws and policies, and they don’t understand the legislative process. So, I think that’s one of the first myths.

In our role as an agency, there’s this belief that we’re just a compliance police. We’re just out there to get you. And I always like to say, “That’s not our role.” Is oversight and compliance a part of our function as a state agency? Absolutely. But we want to be thought partners in improving learning.

I’m not going to tell you that we know everything. We’ve got some really talented folks here that blow me away with the quality of work that they do. But if you’re struggling and failing, there’s this myth in schools that you would never call the Department of Education. You can’t admit that you don’t know the answer to something because they’re going to come and sanction you or take your money away. No, call us! We want to be a true partner. We have to hold people accountable, but we can help you avoid simple mistakes or partner with you with a district or someone that’s going through a similar challenge.

We’re not the enemy; failure is the enemy. I’m going to hold people to eliminating failure. And if you’re willing to commit to eliminating failure, you’re not going to have any problems with us as an agency. But if you’re here to support systems and not students, and perpetuate failure, then we’re going to have a problem.

I just want people to know, there’s this myth that state agencies are these awful people that are trying to ruin education. We’re not trying to ruin education. In fact, we’re investing more resources in education, especially our public schools, than in the history of our public school investments. We know that when the public schools thrive, they’re in the community, and in a lot of our communities, they’re the number one employer, and they have so much history and so many families that participate. We need them to be the first and best choice, and we’re not the enemy. Choice is not the enemy; failure is the enemy. Let’s work together to come up with some resolutions and opportunities for students and families to eliminate failure.

---

Access our full conversation on your favorite podcast app. Please follow Freedom to Learn on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to receive new episodes every Thursday morning!

---

---