Thirteen years of enrollment for every Arkansas public school district and charter system: before, during, and after the state's biggest education policy shift.
Arkansas's LEARNS Act created Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs) in 2023, the state's education savings account program. Assessing what has happened to public school enrollment since requires a credible baseline, a defensible answer to "compared to what." Enrollment was already shifting before COVID, and the pandemic disrupted it further still.
This tool tracks fall-by-fall enrollment for all 235 current-boundary school districts and all 22 public charter school systems, drawn from the state's own Student Information System (SIS). The data is organized into three eras: the baseline (2013–14 through 2019–20), the COVID shock (2020–21 and 2021–22), and the EFA era (2022–23 onward).
Statewide totals are verified against Arkansas's officially published figures for all thirteen years, to the student. Where a district's numbers carry a caveat (a boundary change, a thin pre-EFA baseline), it is disclosed on the row itself, not buried in a footnote. Full data sources, era definitions, and every known limitation are documented in the methodology.
The whole state on one chart: total, district-only, and charter-only enrollment by year, with the three eras shaded. Best for the big picture and the topline numbers.
Every district colored by its EFA-era enrollment change. Best for seeing the geographic pattern at a glance; click any district to open its detail page.
All 235 districts ranked by EFA-era change, searchable, filterable to declining/stable/growing. Best for finding which specific districts changed the most, or looking up one by name.
One district's full enrollment history, its trajectory classification, era-by-era rates, and any caveats that apply. Search for any district by name to go straight to its page. Every district's page also has its own shareable link.
Every metric for every district in one sortable table, nothing filtered out. Best for researchers who want the numbers themselves.
A companion table for Arkansas's 22 public charter school systems: enrollment, year-over-year changes within the EFA era, and growth trajectories. Deliberately simpler than the district views. Most charters are too new for baseline-era comparisons to mean anything.
Enrollment counts show what changed, not why. This tool doesn't track where departing students went (EFA participation, private schools, homeschooling, or moves out of state), doesn't include private school or EFA program data, and doesn't go below the district level. Claims about causes need evidence beyond these counts.