The Hidden Role of K–12 Open Enrollment Policies in America’s Public Schools

Political Implications

As increasing numbers of students take advantage of open enrollment opportunities, policymakers need to consider three key issues.

First, traditional methods of school transportation, such as the big yellow school bus, are no longer efficient because many transfer students, especially rural ones, do not live along designated bus routes. Getting to school is often a challenge for open enrollment students because 44 states, including the ones discussed here, do not require receiving school districts to provide transportation for transfer students from other districts. In some states, school districts can even prevent other districts from transporting transfer students across district lines, which often disproportionately affects low-income students. While families and receiving school districts can establish designated bus pick-up locations just outside district boundaries, this option is available only to students whose families can drive them to those locations.

These transportation challenges, combined with long commutes, mean that open enrollment participation in rural or small-town areas will generally be lower than in urban or suburban districts. But state policymakers can modify laws that make it unnecessarily difficult for students to transfer. For example, they could stop allowing school districts to prevent other districts from transporting students who transfer out of their district boundaries.

State policymakers could also look to Arizona’s recent transportation reforms, which allow school districts to use 11- to 15-seat passenger vans instead of the traditional yellow school bus. Such innovations could reduce the cost of transporting small groups of transfer students. Such policies could be key to helping students access appropriate educational options even if they don’t live nearby.

Policymakers could also reconsider how to finance capital projects. While local taxes have often paid for these projects in the past, school districts will have a harder time convincing local taxpayers to approve new bonds when their children won’t be attending their assigned school.

For example, Queen Creek Unified School District in Arizona has failed to secure voter approval for bond funding for three years in a row. In fact, only 40 percent of voters supported the bond in November 2023. Part of the reason the bond failed is that many students living within the district’s boundaries do not attend the district’s schools, choosing instead to attend charter schools or schools in other districts. In fact, nearly 20 percent of Queen Creek’s students came from other districts in the 2021–2022 school year. The district’s situation is not unusual; 30 percent of Arizona students do not attend public schools in their assigned district. This shows that policymakers in states with robust school choice policies need to rethink how they fund capital projects.

Finally, policymakers can hold school districts to higher standards for admitting applicants with disabilities by preventing them from rejecting transfer applicants from other schools. Many school districts are quick to limit the number of transfer applicants from other schools with disabilities based on the capacity of their special education courses, often citing insufficient staffing. However, this practice unfairly limits the educational opportunities for students with disabilities. It also means that traditional public school admissions processes operate at a lower level than public charter school admissions processes, which require all applicants to be admitted, assuming there are available spaces. As a result, policymakers could take a closer look at school district admissions processes to ensure that district schools are open to all students.