For those supporting
school choice
, policy progress can often be described as “two steps forward and one step back.”
In March 2021,
West Virginia
passed a far-reaching Education Savings Account plan that was quickly tied up in legal challenges. It took the courts until October 2022 to resolve the complaints in the program’s favor. In
Arizona
, a state with a robust program and a history of choice, newly seated Gov. Katie Hobbs said she would work to roll back Arizona’s educational freedom.
The most common pushback against school choice programs is that they unfairly take resources out of the public system and pass them to affluent families who can, and do, already afford to opt out of traditional public school. Among these two sides of education reform — more choice versus keeping public dollars in public systems — people are split. In State Policy Network’s December
State Voices
polling, 50% of people said they support a school choice program in which the money follows the child, with significant partisan differences (44% of Democrats support compared to 58% of Republicans).
But when the same group of voters is asked if families should have more options when it comes to public education, 78% agree — with minimal differences based on political party or ideology. While people may be split on how we provide more options to students, there is a solid consensus that additional choices are needed.
SCHOOL CHOICE IS THE GREAT EQUALIZER
That is why during this year’s National School Choice Week, education reform advocates should take a closer look at how to expand state open enrollment policies. Open enrollment allows families to choose a public school other than the one they are assigned to based on their address. While all 50 states and the District of Columbia have some form of open enrollment, just 13 states allow students to attend any traditional public school in any district. In other states, programs are only available to certain types of students, such as those at low-performing schools. Others have policies in which districts and schools have control over the final decision to permit or prohibit open enrollment, introducing bias and secrecy to the process. There is significant room for improvement.
Open enrollment can create benefits for both students who choose to change schools and for students who stay in their assigned district. A
study
from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty details that the open enrollment program in the Badger State has helped transfer students from high-poverty districts to low-poverty districts and increases racial diversity, which has benefits for all of the students involved.
For most people, it is not feasible to choose where to live based primarily on the characteristic of the local public school. Perhaps a family is forced to move out of a neighborhood for economic reasons but wants to keep their child’s education consistent since there are many negative effects of abruptly changing a child’s school. Family logistics are much different today than they were when the zoned school system was created; a nonlocal public school could be a better fit due to shared custody or pre- and post-school childcare arrangements that allow parents to work. For older students, an alternative to their assigned school could make it easier to work or pursue other passions after class is dismissed.
With so many considerations, how could anyone expect a simplistic address-based approach to work in the best interest of most students?
Many states have shown that open enrollment policies can be executed well and are utilized by families. Voters are in bipartisan agreement that families should have more choices. School choice proponents who simply want more options and opponents of private choice who want to keep money in the public system alike should be able to rally behind open enrollment policies to help students get the best education they can, regardless of their zip code.
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Erin Norman is the Lee family fellow and senior messaging strategist at State Policy Network.
