Study: Open enrollment benefits students, but state policies aren’t robust enough

Public schools are touted as bastions of inclusion and accessibility, but education reform advocates say arbitrary district and zoning lines prevent students from enrolling in the best schools.

A new report from the Reason Foundation lays out the barriers facing families and policymakers when it comes to open enrollment and makes recommendations for how future measures should be constructed.

A 2024 study in Massachusetts found that students who took advantage of open enrollment had higher math and reading scores, increased attendance and on-time graduations, were more likely to enroll in and graduate from college and had more successful careers. 

But despite the proven benefits, few states have robust open enrollment policies.  

Jude Schwalbach, senior policy analyst at the Reason Foundation, found just 21 states allow students to transfer to different districts without the approval of their residentially zoned district. 

States also gather little data regarding open enrollment, making it difficult to improve the education system. 

In some areas, families can be forced to pay tuition for enrolling in a public school outside their local district – even though they’re already funding the school system through their tax dollars.  

In some cases, public school “tuition” can exceed $10,000.  

But where open enrollment exists, it is extremely popular. 

In Arizona, 11% of public school students are enrolled outside their zoned school (15,000) or district (100,000). Florida has nearly 263,000 open enrollment students; Wisconsin, 71,000; Colorado, 199,000; and Indiana, 87,000.  

In Arizona and Florida, between 70% and 80% of students transfer to an A- or B-rated district. 

Since families are self-selecting higher quality schools, Schwalbach argued policymakers should reward those schools with more funding. 

“As strong open enrollment laws increase student mobility, state policymakers should ensure that education dollars are portable,” he wrote in the report. “Ideally state and local education dollars should follow students to their new school. This provides school districts with a strong fiscal incentive to enroll transfer students.” 

Schwalbach also laid out several recommendations for robust open enrollment policies, including:  

• Allowing both inter-district and cross-district transferring; 

• Forbidding any additional charges or tuition;  

• Prohibiting discrimination, particularly based on special learning needs or disabilities. Exceptions might be made based on disciplinary records; 

• Requiring local districts and state education departments to collect and publish data regarding open enrollment; 

• Mandating schools to provide written reasons to rejected applicants and have an appeals process. 

When rating states’ current open enrollment policies based on these metrics, Arizona, Florida, Idaho Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia are at the top. 

With the exception of Idaho, all those states also have universal school choice programs.