From reading groups and guest speakers, to professional development for educators and media mentions by the White House, ACRE has had another successful semester of economics, education, and policy research. We hope you’ve been able to come to one of our events on campus, or read some of our many materials online.

Distinguished Speaker Series & Colloquium

Michael Munger (right) with Jeremy Horpedahl

Our final guest speaker for the Fall 2023 semester was Michael Munger from Duke University, who gave a public talk on “Monopoly Power, Political Power, and the Problem of Platforms,” and also joined BT����students in several classes. Munger followed two other speakers this semester: Emily Hamilton from the Mercatus Center, who spoke about housing policy and affordability; and David Bernstein from George Mason University Law School, who spoke about the history of racial classification in the United States. Professor Bernstein was also the keynote speaker for and a participant in our annual ACRE Colloquium, which brought students and professors from across Arkansas together for a weekend to discuss the ideas in Bernstein’s book.

Fall Reading Groups

Students in Dr. Jacob Held’s “Landmark Supreme Court” reading group

Our reading groups set an ACRE record this semester! More students applied than ever before, resulting in a wait-list to participate. One of those groups visited Southern Methodist University in October for a weekend discussion event with students at other universities, and keynote speaker Dr. Bart Wilson from Chapman University. Our Spring 2024 reading groups will be announced soon, and we look forward to having another good response from BT����students.

K-12 Programs

ACRE’s K12 program has hosted a number of professional development opportunities for educators across Arkansas. This past month’s engaging topics included: “Economic Mysteries in Economic History: What was Roaring about the Twenties?” and “The 2023 Economics Nobel Prize: Claudia Goldin, Women, & Work.”�� Looking ahead, the ACRE educator reading group will continue this spring. For a full list of K12 offerings, to sign up for the K12 newsletter, or request a classroom visit this spring, go to

Government Transparency in Arkansas

AFOIA in the State Constitution:

Lately in Arkansas there has been a lot of discussion about government transparency, both during the Special Session of the Arkansas General Assembly in September and in the aftermath of the legislative session, from which a citizen initiative emerged proposing the incorporation of Arkansas’s Freedom of Information Act (AFOIA) into the state constitution. ACRE Policy Analyst Dr. Joyce Ajayi has continued tracking these developments and offering her expertise to help support the public debate on the issue. In November, she participated as a panelist at a town hall meeting on this topic in Conway and also authored an op-ed, “,” published in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. In the piece, she elaborates on the consequences and implications of incorporating AFOIA into the state constitution, emphasizing the need for careful consideration of both advantages and drawbacks.

Looking ahead, Joyce, along with a team of researchers across Arkansas, is co-authoring the Arkansas Civic Health Index. This publication will offer a comprehensive analysis of Arkansas’s civic health, including aspects like web transparency. The report, set to be released in December, will provide insights into the civic and political engagement landscape in Arkansas, showcasing strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and opportunities.

Media

As part of my role as Director at ACRE and a BT����professor, I regularly appear in the media and write popular essays about economics. A few of those outreach activities stood out as especially interesting and important this semester.

• I once again appeared on PBS’s Arkansas Week program and how that relates to public policy, such as the state budget.
• The Charles Koch Foundation featured an essay I wrote explaining��. That essay summarizes a lot of the principles we use to think about fiscal policy at ACRE in our research and educational outreach.
• Lastly, a somewhat light-hearted blog post that I wrote about the cost of a , surprised me by getting picked up by a lot of media sources, as well as the a claim the White House made. I was not expecting that, but I am glad that someone is reading my work!

New Employees

ACRE is set to accomplish even more in the coming year with the addition of two outstanding individuals to our team. Elise Ormonde and Heidi Saliba each bring unique skillsets and perspectives to ACRE’s research and outreach. We are fortunate to welcome them, and you can read more about both here.

All of us at ACRE hope that you have a wonderful last few weeks of 2023, and we look forward to sharing more about all of our events, research, and student programs in 2024.

2023 Colloquium attendees

By Terra Aquia, Educational Programs Manager

The ACRE Colloquium brings together students and faculty from universities across the state of Arkansas. Attendees spend a weekend reading and discussing economic topics from collections of primary & secondary sources. The 2023 Colloquium program was organized by Dr. Wendy Lucas, History Chair and Professor at the University of Central Arkansas, and held at the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute on October 13-15. The topic for the weekend was Creating and Categorizing Race.��

David Bernstein and colloquium attendees

David E. Bernstein, Professor and Chair at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason��University, attended the event and presented the keynote address on his book Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America. Bernstein’s work outlines the history and current issues surrounding the use of racial classification in the United States. Alongside the book, colloquium attendees read a collection of historical articles that explored the origins of various racial classifications and their use throughout history.

Throughout the weekend, students and faculty discussed the topics through formal structured discussions, as well as casual discussions over meals and during breaks. Attendees consisted of students and faculty from a variety of disciplines including history, economics, philosophy,

ACRE Director Jeremy Horpedahl and colloquium attendees

political science, business, and more. The interdisciplinary backgrounds of attendees allowed for rich discussions from a variety of perspectives.

The ACRE Colloquium is hosted annually. Past topics have included The Political Economy of Special Interest Groups, Free Enterprise & Socialism, and The Morality of Profit. University faculty interested in attending or having their students attend the event can reach out to Educational Programs Manager Terra Aquia at tvotaw@uca.edu for more information.

By Elise Ormonde, ACRE Research & Program Coordinator

BT����students participating in the ACRE Fall 2023 Economics Reading group had the exciting opportunity to travel to Dallas, Texas for a weekend summit hosted by the Southern Methodist University (SMU). This event was a collaboration between UCA, SMU, and Western Michigan University, featuring student reading discussions and a presentation by Dr. Bart J. Wilson on his upcoming book, Meaningful Economics.

The reading group program has provided students with the chance to investigate economics beyond the classroom and how it relates to this session’s theme:��Humanomics: Economic Freedom & the Not-So-Dismal Science.��Humanomics aims to incorporate human conduct into traditional economic theory and to answer questions such as: What are markets and do free markets promote the development of moral behavior? Are economists’ simplifying assumptions about human behavior and decision-making causing them to miss key components of the world? Students were already familiar with some of Dr. Wilson’s past work surrounding humanomics due to the inclusion of his and Vernon L. Smith’s book, Humanomics: Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations for the Twenty-First Century, in this fall’s curriculum. Consequently, Wilson’s presentation on “Meaningful Economics” sparked relevant student conversation and many insightful questions.

The ACRE Economics Reading group will continue in the spring and focus on morality in markets.

During the legislative session ACRE staff are frequently focused on bills and testifying before committee. But our dedication to education and outreach to students is a pillar of ACRE’s mission and presents opportunities for student involvement year-round.

Recently, ACRE Policy Analyst Dr. Joyce Ajayi and ACRE Program Coordinator Terra Aquia lad an ACRE-sponsored travel opportunity to the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis. Four BT����students from the BT����College of Business (Madison Peyton, Sophomore Economics Major; Brenna Dobson, Junior Data Analytics Major; Sydney Klein, Freshman Marketing Major; and Mariah Manning, Sophomore Economics Major) attended the Women in Economics Symposium. This annual symposium began in 2018 at the St. Louis Fed, along with the with the goal of connecting young women with accomplished women in the economics profession.

At the 2023 symposium, speaker Stephanie Aaronson, a Senior Associate Director, Division of Research and Statistics for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and Daryl Fairweather, Chief Economist at Redfin, shared personal experiences of studying economics and then learning where they wanted to apply their knowledge in the workplace. They answered several questions from student attendees about graduate and PhD programs, finding entry level positions in economics fields, what skills and talents to highlight, and how to navigate salary negotiations.

The student trip to the Women in Economics symposium is just one of the many ACRE programs for BT����students. ACRE sponsors a variety of university student programming to create engaging learning experiences for students and discuss economic ideas in a variety of academic settings. BT����business students can participate in the ACRE Cubs & Biz@Bear programs right from their residence halls. Every semester students from all BT����majors participate in ACRE Reading Groups where students meet weekly to discuss economics readings and topics. Students who excel in ACRE programs often apply for an ACRE Research Fellowship where they work with a faculty mentor to produce real, publishable research in topics related to ACRE’s mission such as occupational licensing, taxes, government spending, and more. For more information about any of ACRE’s university student programs, please visit /acre/undergraduate-research-fellows/ or reach us by email at��acre@uca.edu.

The Arkansas General Assembly has now completed 7 weeks of its 2023 Regular Session. While there is still a lot more work to be done this year, we’ve already seen some major developments, and at ACRE we are closely watching several pieces of legislation where our research can help inform the debate and legislative process. I wanted to provide a summary of what has happened so far, and what to look forward to in the remainder of the session.

The biggest news last week was the release of the full details the LEARNS Act (), which is Governor Sanders’ major initiative to reform K-12 education in Arkansas. Not only is this bill important in its own right, but it will also be important for allowing other parts of the legislative agenda to move forward. Given the potential fiscal costs of the education reform, other spending and taxation changes were partially on hold until the details became clear. I recently spoke with about how all of the proposed spending and tax changes in Arkansas might fit together this year.

The education reform bill has already made it through the Arkansas Senate and is expected to come up in the House next week. ACRE has published a variety of research on K-12 education and school choice in the past. In particular, several of our research papers address an important question in the current debate: does school choice hurt traditional public schools? Dr. Thomas Snyder summarizes his research and the research of other economists in a recent ACRE blogpost. In brief, most of the research suggests that school choice programs do not hurt student performance in traditional public schools.

Here are a few of the other pieces of legislation ACRE has been following.

Joseph Johns testifies on HB 1027

While there has not been a major tax reform bill filed yet for Arkansas income taxes, there have been several bills related to the issue of local taxes. ACRE Policy Analyst Joseph Johns summarized the relevant local tax issues in another ACRE blogpost. The first bill Mr. Johns discussed would ban local governments in Arkansas from enacting income taxes, and it has already been enacted into law as . Another bill would require A&P taxes to be put before voters before they can be enacted or increased. These are local sales taxes —�� primarily enacted by cities — on hotels, restaurants, and other similar businesses, but do not require a vote of the citizens. has already passed through the Arkansas House, and Mr. Johns testified before the House committee presenting ACRE’s research relevant to the bill.

Dr. Joyce Ajayi testifies on HB 1318

Several bills have also been proposed which would improve local government transparency in Arkansas, and our Policy Analyst Dr. Joyce Ajayi has testified on several of them. would improve the bidding process for city governments in Arkansas, making the process more transparent, and it has passed the Arkansas Senate. Another transparency bill is even more closely aligned with ACRE’s research. HB 1399 would give city governments the option to publish budgets online, rather than in newspapers, which has the potential to save cities money, and would also improve their scores in ACRE’s web transparency index. ACRE’s index already planned to include cities in our new 2023 report, and this bill would give them an immediate improvement in their scores for fiscal transparency. Dr. Ajayi testified before the House committee on this bill as well, but it is currently on hold awaiting a fiscal impact statement.

We’ve also seen a major bill proposed related to ACRE’s research on occupational licensing. Policy Analyst Zach Burt explained in a blog post how SB 90 would improve opportunities for work in Arkansas by establishing “universal licensing recognition.” A law like this would mean that workers could move to Arkansas and not need to go through a lot of red tape to start working if they were already licensed in another state. The bill has not been presented in committee yet, but ACRE is prepared to share our research with the legislature when it is presented, potentially in the very near future.

Thank you for continuing to follow ACRE’s research and our educational outreach to the legislature. Be sure to continue checking our blog and subscribe to our newsletter (go to the bottom of this page:��/acre/) as we will continue to provide weekly updates throughout the session.

The topic of school choice is back at the forefront in Arkansas with our new Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. One of the most common arguments you’ll hear against school choice is “What about those students left behind in traditional public schools?” If public money and resources goes towards a charter school, or towards a voucher to a private school, one can argue that those dollars are diverted away from improving traditional public schools. This diversion could mean that students left behind in traditional public schools will be hurt.

On the other hand, someone can reasonably argue the opposite effect is true: an alternative choice of schooling can put pressure on the traditional public school to improve its teaching effectiveness, etc., to attract students and resources. For example, a grocery store will have to offer quality food for an acceptable price to attract customers when a competing grocery store opens its doors nearby. And the grocery store analogy has another connection: one of the largest assistance programs in the U.S. for low-income families is SNAP benefits (“food stamps”) which allow families to choose where they spend money on groceries. We might call it “food choice.”

If logical arguments can be made for both the positive and the negative effect of school choice on traditional public school students, there is one thing to do: look at the data!

Does the data say that school choice harms students left behind in a traditional public school? Most of the research says “No.” West Virginia University economists a similar question in their state and found that more homeschooling and private school enrollment improved public school districts’ test scores (Cebula, Hall, Tackett 2016). An earlier (Holmes, Desimone, & Rupp, 2006) discovered students in North Carolina’s traditional public schools achieved higher test scores when charter schools competed for their enrollment. And this increase in test scores in traditional public schools happened even though the typical student going to the competing charter school was an above-average performer!

Those weren’t the only studies on the subject. A brief by (Max, et al. 2019) systematically summarized this literature. When looking at the effect of charter schools on student performance in traditional public schools, they discovered that 9 studies showed a positive effect, 3 studies showed a negative effect, and 12 studies found either no effect or a mixed effect. When looking at the effect of private school vouchers on student performance in traditional public schools, they discovered 8 studies that found a positive effect, 1 study that found no effect, and zero studies that found a negative effect.�� If you were to combine these findings in a pie chart, it would look like pie chart below:

Studies on the Effect of School Choice on Traditional Public Schools

In a similar in 2022, they found that of the 28 studies that examined private school choice programs, 25 found positive effects on the scores of students who remained in public schools. There was also a review of the literature on vouchers published in the which found that “Evidence on both small-scale and large-scale programs suggests that competition induced by vouchers leads public schools to improve” (Epple et al. 2017). That review of the research also suggests that not every voucher program has been successful, but that researchers are learning what works and what doesn’t. Arkansas can learn from what other states have tried.

With these findings, we can start to feel more comfortable about the effects of school choice on traditional public students. But what would make us even more comfortable? Perhaps a study that was focused on Arkansas, not on other states. We have two of these studies. Researchers affiliated with the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics (ACRE) have done two studies regarding the impact of school choice on students in traditional public schools, both published in academic journals.

The first by Kalulu, Snyder and Ouattara (2017) found that elementary school students in Arkansas’ traditional public schools performed better in math, reading, and language test scores in school districts that had a larger percentage of students enrolling in charter schools, controlling for relevant factors.

Instead of just looking at a student’s academic performance, our second study examined student behavior. A student with more schooling options may find a place more comfortable than their designated traditional public school (which is a reason to seek an alternative school in the first place). The by Snyder, Newell, and Kalulu (2019) found a positive relationship between charter school enrollment and student behavior in traditional public schools. Their estimates indicated that a one percentage point increase in charter school enrollment (as a percentage of total enrollment) in a school district was associated with 4.9 fewer disciplinary infractions per 100 students.

When presented with this evidence, policymakers may feel less worried about the harm school choice can have on students in traditional public schools. In fact, the evidence suggests that restricting school choice may be more harmful. Even in the minority of studies that found a negative impact on traditional public schools from increased competition with public charters, Arkansas can learn from mistakes that other states have made.

Given that competition from public charters and private schools often improves performance in traditional public schools, policymakers should be able to set this concern aside and focus on the other potential benefits and costs of increasing school choice in Arkansas.

By Terra Aquia

Who were the winners of the 2021 Arkansas Economics Challenge?

Twenty-seven students from seven Arkansas high schools met virtually on April 8th to compete in the Arkansas Economics Challenge.��

Winning teams from this competition are eligible to advance to additional stages with other high school students from all over the U.S.��

The Arkansas Economics Challenge was made possible through generous financial support from the Council for Economic Education, as well as support from Economics Arkansas and the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics.

The competition was split into three divisions, a Team Testing Competition, where teams of students completed an economics exam focused on key concepts from micro, macro, and global economics, a Writing Competition, where individual students submitted writing samples under the topic “Thinking Like an Economist,” and a Digital Design competition, where students were asked to create digital projects that highlighted economic concepts.

The winners were:

Team Awards:

Adam Smith Division:

1st Place: Bentonville West High School

Educator: Skyler Wiens

Students: Ananya Vangoor, Karina Batra, Maanasvi Kotturi

2nd Place: Haas Hall Academy

Educator: Rebecca Luebker

Students: Ellen Zhang, Kathryn Bell, Jon Sanker, Ryan Troung

David Ricardo Division:

1st Place: Arkansas School for Math, Science, and the Arts

Educator: Carl Frank

Students: Alec Gatewood, Bryson Austin, Pierce Hickey

2nd Place: Haas Hall Academy

Educator: Rebecca Luebker

Students: Ian Popp, Thomas Walker, Henry Szalinski, Kyler Pitts

Individual Awards:

Writing Contest:

1st Place: Karina Batra, Bentonville West High School

2nd Place: Hemali Gauri, Haas Hall Academy

Digital Design Contest:

1st Place: Ananya Vangoor, Bentonville West High School

2nd Place: Karina Batra, Bentonville West High School

Student of the Year:

Karina Batra, Bentonville West High School

Teacher of the Year:

Skyler Wiens, Bentonville West High School

Library Fund Award:

Haas Hall Academy

Missed the event? Watch highlights from the competition

By Caleb Taylor

What are the differences between state and federal constitutional law? How do lawyers use state constitutions to protect their clients? How do state laws differ from those at the federal level in protecting individual rights?

Come learn the answers to these questions and more from Institute for Justice Senior Attorney Justin Pearson in a virtual event “Our State is Freer Than Yours: How State Constitutions Protect Individual Rights�� on March 4th at 4 p.m. sponsored by the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics, Economics Arkansas and the Institute for Justice.

Pearson was the lead attorney in a successful 2016 case that taxi cab permit applicants to “prove they would not take customers away from Little Rock’s only existing taxi company.” Pulaski County Circuit Court ruled in favor of�� Pearson’s client, Ken Leininger, saying that Little Rock’s city code violated the Arkansas Constitution, which prohibits the government from creating a private monopoly.

The Little Rock Board of Directors later granted Leininger’s request for seven new taxi cab permits.

During the event, Pearson will discuss how he was able to rely on a provision in the Arkansas Constitution that does not exist in most states.

Concepts from this session can be tied to for teaching Civics, U.S. Government, Business, Entrepreneurship, and other courses in the social studies content area. The event is open to all, and educators attending this session will receive 1 hour of professional development credit and free resources to take back to their classrooms.

You can register for the event .

Know a student interested in reading about and discussing new ideas?

The application deadline for preferred consideration in our 2021 spring undergraduate student reading groups is right around the corner on Thursday, December 17.

ACRE’s three undergraduate student reading group options for the 2021 spring semester are the “We Watch the Watchmen!” philosophy reading group, the “Economics, Evolution, and the Environment” economics reading group, and the “Institutions and the Constitution” history reading group.��

For complete descriptions of all three groups, go here.

ACRE reading groups are weekly sessions designed by BT����professors and ACRE staff. Applications are open to all BT����students.�� A $500 scholarship will be awarded to participants upon completion of the reading group.

For questions about reading groups or the application process, contact Zachary Burt at zburt1@uca.edu.

To apply for one of our reading groups, fill out the application here. The final deadline for consideration for the Spring 2021 undergraduate student reading groups is January 5, 2021.

By Joyce Ajayi,��Mavuto Kalulu, and��David Lee

Year after year we are seeing more laws and initiatives go into effect to encourage local levels of government in Arkansas to have more online transparency. For example, Act 564 recently mandated all Arkansas counties to publish their annual budget and financial reports online. Why is this important? Local government transparency initiatives play an integral role in increasing citizen’s trust in government. We need more strategic transparency initiatives at lower levels of government as shown by a 2019 study by Mavuto Kalulu, Terra Aquia, and Joyce Ajayi “Creating an Index to Measure Transparency in Arkansas Counties” published in the Southwest Business and Economics Journal.��

School districts are a great place to focus transparency initiatives because they receive a lot of tax dollars and it is hard to know how those dollars are spent. A 2013 assessment of online transparency by Kristin McMurray “” published by the Sunshine Review revealed that lower levels of government such as counties and school districts are not as transparent as states. Yet, they are entrusted with billions of taxpayer dollars. From 2015 to 2019, school districts in Arkansas spent .��

Recently researchers at the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics (ACRE) began looking into how school districts in Arkansas are doing with regard to online transparency. We are starting with the school district’s procurement process. “Procurement” refers to the process of acquiring goods and services from third parties. Goods and services can range from contracts for work to be done, or services to be performed, or for equipment, materials or supplies to be sold to the district.��

The procurement process is governed by ACA §6-21-301 thru §6-21-306, which gives school boards the authority to formulate guidelines for the procurement process. The board can designate the purchasing authority to a lawfully designated purchasing official. For purchases equal to or greater than $20,000, the purchasing officials are required to solicit bids from potential suppliers. School districts announce intentions to purchase goods or services through a request for proposal (RFP)- a document that specifies details of sought goods and services including the criteria the officials will use to evaluate bids. The winning bid is determined by scoring each criterion and the bidder with the best score is awarded the contract. The criteria includes, among others, price, quality and delivery time. In the event all bids are rejected, purchasing officials can negotiate the contracts individually but they have to give an opportunity to all the bidders to enter into the negotiation to ensure the process remains competitive. Purchases less than $20,000, can be solicited without bids but purchasing officials are prohibited from splitting a purchase worth more than $20,000 to circumvent the bidding process. For example, on April 7, 2020, put out a request for quotation for paper supplies to restock its warehouse. The contract to supply the requested materials was awarded to DGS Educational Products, National Art & School Supplies, Pyramids School Products, School Specialty Inc. and standard Stationery Supply Co.������

With billions of taxpayers’ dollars, comes the responsibility of�� informing residents how they are spent. Government officials must be above suspicion in matters of spending and procurement ethics. They can ensure transparency by providing residents with easy access to information on the procurement contracts online. Publishing current and prior years vendors and the value of their contracts allows residents to see who is being awarded the contracts and eliminates the mistrust some residents may have in the procurement process. Especially for purchases that require competitive bidding, officials should publish online requests for proposals (RFPs) as well as bid winners so that residents can see what was requested and compare it with what was delivered.��

When residents are able to provide this extra layer of scrutiny, it encourages purchasing officials to adhere to the guidance set by the school district board resulting in reduced opportunities to abuse the system without getting caught. Good rules can also minimize the temptation for public officials to award contracts to preferred vendors through manipulating the requirements to favor certain vendors.�� This would also prevent even bolder misuses of funds like when Brandi Freeman of Westside School District stole�� $178,391 in 2017. Almost $68,000 of this amount was for unauthorized payments for personal expenses and payments to personal vendor accounts and a fictitious vendor. You can learn more about this case in the “”��

Transparency also saves money. A report by Rachel Cross, Michelle Surka and Scott Welder, “,” documents the cost savings various states have made by publishing contract information on their transparency websites. Because the information is public and easily accessible, contractors and vendors are less inclined to overcharge for the goods and services provided. In addition, when this information is easily accessible, it encourages more vendors to apply. Increased competition results in lower prices. For example, a and her colleagues reported that the launch of Florida’s contract database was partially responsible for saving $40 million during the period 2013-2014 to 2014-2015.

Current Arkansas laws do not address how residents can access the information regarding school districts’ procurement process or who ultimately gets the contracts so the online publication of this material is voluntary. While some of the information can be obtained through FOIA, publishing the information online facilitates a smooth flow of information between school districts and residents. As argued earlier, it reduces the number of requests as well as providing residents quick access to information.�� Our research team randomly selected 20�� of the 269 school districts for a pilot examination of online procurement information. The sample includes�� districts of varying sizes and population across the state. The table below shows the information that we found online for each of the school districts in our sample.

To ensure the accuracy of our online examination of the websites, we contacted all 20 school districts via phone and email to gather more insight on their bidding procedure. Eighteen out of the 20 districts responded. Only two school districts had not returned our call or emails by April 5th 2020. We learned that school districts keep bidding information for a varying length of time. According to Ark. Code Ann. § 14-59-114 “bids are counted as support documents, and must be maintained and archived for a period of four years”. Eight schools indicated they held the bids for about five years after the contract was awarded. One school district indicated that it actively destroys their records after completion. This is not only a breach of ��Ark. Code Ann. § 14-59-114 but also unwise considering the possibility that a vendor or other party may be unsatisfied and may seek documentation for a court case.
Fort Smith school district publishes more bidding information online than the other nineteen school districts.�� They include current and prior year’s requests for proposals and bid winners. Three other school districts, namely Jonesboro, Little Rock and Texarkana have sections for RFPS on their websites but none of the actual documents were in there when we examined them in April 2020.����

Billions of dollars are spent by school districts procuring goods and services. This information should be easily available and easily understandable. School districts already have an online platform and are already required to post other information online by the state. Alternatively, the state could create a�� transparency portal for school districts to publish their contract information. Missouri’s�� data portal provides Missourians access to expenditure data for both state and local governments. The data is searchable by vendor. While Missouri’s portal does not show data for school districts, it is advisable for Arkansas to consider expanding its state transparency portal to include school districts. These transparency portals do not provide all the information regarding bids such as bid amounts of other bidders but at least the residents can track down how the money is spent by their government. Although there is currently no state mandate for school districts to keep an online record of their bids or any information regarding them, it is a transparency issue and taxpayers and parents have a right to know how these processes are being conducted and the outcomes of the processes.

Mavuto Kalulu and Joyce Ajayi are policy analysts with the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway and coauthors of “Access Arkansas: County Web Transparency,” an annual report on the accessibility of fiscal, administrative, and political information in Arkansas counties.��

David Lee is a student worker and was tasked with the gathering of information from school districts through direct contact by phone and email. He also searched for the information on the school districts’ websites.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Central Arkansas.