$7,208 against Northwest Arkansas tuition: what the EFA covers and what you still owe

The Education Freedom Account is often described as if it pays for private school. In much of Northwest Arkansas it pays for most of private school, and the difference between those two sentences is the number you will be writing a check for. The account is a fixed state amount; tuition is whatever each school sets. Knowing the gap before you tour a campus saves a hard conversation in July.

What the account is worth

For 2026-27 the EFA pays $7,208 per student, delivered as $1,802 each quarter. The amount is tied to state funding for public schools and has climbed each year the program has existed: roughly $6,672 in 2023-24, $6,856 in 2024-25 and about $6,994 in 2025-26. Students who came from the old Succeed Scholarship carry a higher amount.

So the account grows, but modestly — a few hundred dollars a year. That is the baseline to compare any tuition figure against.

Tuition has been moving faster

An analysis by the Arkansas Advocate, using tuition schedules the state collected from participating schools, found the average tuition at participating schools for 2025-26 was around $8,800, against roughly $7,000 in state funding that year. Among the 93 schools that had participated in all three years of the program, average tuition rose about $1,400 over that span, and about $860 in the most recent year alone.

Put the two trends side by side and the gap widens rather than closes. At the statewide averages above, a family covers something on the order of $1,800 themselves — our arithmetic from the reported figures, not a number the analysis states.

What that looks like at NWA schools

This region spans the widest tuition range in the state, so averages are nearly useless here. Two schools in our directory appeared in that analysis by name:

Fayetteville Christian School doubled its K-12 tuition from $3,000 to $6,000 for 2025-26, folding in fees that had previously run $700 to $850 separately. Even after doubling, that sits below the account amount.
Thaden School in Bentonville was listed at $29,300 for high school, the highest figure in the analysis. Thaden indexes tuition to family income, so published figures are a ceiling rather than a price.

Between those two extremes sit most of the region's schools, and we do not have verified current tuition for them. Ask each school directly, and ask for the all-in number.

The questions that actually determine your cost

Tuition is one line. Several others decide what you pay:

Are fees inside tuition or outside it? Registration, technology, books, athletics and activity fees can add well over a thousand dollars at a school whose headline tuition looks competitive.
Is there a sibling or parish discount, and does it apply before or after the EFA?
Does the school bill the account directly? Participating schools link to your account and submit a payment request, which you approve.
Is tuition the same at every grade? High school is frequently the most expensive year and the hardest to find a seat in.

Spend on tuition first

The state's guidance for private school families is explicit about order of operations: spend the account on tuition and fees before anything else. The reason is structural. Two spending categories are capped at 25% of the award each — extracurricular classes held outside a classroom, including sports and in-state field trips, and mileage reimbursement for transportation. Spend early in the year on the fun categories and you can find the tuition line short in April.

Statewide, families largely do follow this. The new annual report found tuition and approved curriculum accounted for 79.4% of all EFA spending in 2025-26, with under 10% going to enrichment.

Unused money does roll forward

One piece of good news for families whose tuition is below the award, which in NWA includes a fair number of the smaller Christian and Montessori schools. Unused funds roll over within the school year, and since 2025-26 they can roll into the next school year as well, up to a limit the state sets. If your school's tuition is $6,000 against a $7,208 account, that margin is not forfeited at the end of the year.

What the state does about increases

The department reviews each participating school's tuition individually and has said it can bar a school from the program if its increases are unreasonable or arbitrary. It has not been reported as having rejected one. In practice, approval is not a judgment that a price is reasonable for your budget — it is the state deciding the school may keep participating.

How big the local numbers have become

The scale is worth seeing. Shiloh Christian School in Springdale was the state's largest EFA school in 2025-26, drawing $10.7 million for 1,537 students — in our 2024-25 figures it had 488. Statewide participation tripled in the same period, to 44,524 students. Demand in this region is not theoretical, and the schools know it.

Before you tour

Ask for the full cost of a year, fees included, at your child's grade. Subtract $7,208. Ask what that remainder is due and when, since the account arrives quarterly and most schools bill monthly or by semester. Our school data pages show participation and enrollment for each school, the EFA guide covers the account mechanics, and if the gap is larger than you can carry, the homeschool and microschool route puts the whole $7,208 under your control instead.

Sources

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