Today, Reason Foundation published our 2025 K-12 Education Spending Spotlight, which brings together over two decades of school finance data for all 50 states. With nationwide funding approaching $1 trillion and outcomes declining—nearly 40% of 4^th graders aren’t reading at a basic level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress— it’s critical to examine how dollars are spent and why they aren’t producing better results.    

Reason Foundation’s interactive tool, which includes data on expenditures, staffing, teacher salaries, debt, and student outcomes, can help answer those questions and is available here.

There are five key trends to know, but here’s the big takeaway: despite record funding, K-12 finance faces structural problems that undermine student achievement.

Between 2002 and 2023, public school funding rose by 35.8% from $14,969 per student to $20,322 per student after adjusting for inflation. New York now spends $36,976 per student followed by New Jersey at $30,267 per student, and funding now exceeds $25,000 per student in eight states, including: Vermont ($29,169 per student), Connecticut ($28,975), Pennsylvania ($26,242), California ($25,941), Rhode Island ($25,709), and Hawaii ($25,485).

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the largest increase in per-student spending has occurred in California, rising 31.5% from $19,724 in 2020 to $25,941 in 2023.

Michigan, Kentucky and Missouri were the next biggest percentage increasers, all spending 17% more per student in 2023 compared to 2020. Per student spending also rose by over 15% during that period in Hawaii, New Mexico, Arizona, Mississippi and Alabama.

Figure 1: Inflation-Adjusted Public School Revenue (2002-2023)

All 50 states increased K-12 funding from 2002 to 2023, but inflation-adjusted average teacher salaries fell by 6.1% between 2002 and 2022, decreasing from $75,152 to $70,548 per year. 

From 2020 to 2022, due in part to high inflation during and after the pandemic, the average teacher’s salary decreased by more than five percent in 38 states. They declined the most in North Carolina (−9.6%), New Mexico (−8.8%), South Carolina (−8.7%), West Virginia (−8.6%), and Mississippi (−8.2%).

Research shows that effective teachers are critical to student learning, so why aren’t more education dollars showing up in teacher paychecks?

One reason is that public schools are spending more money on non-teaching staff, such as instructional aides, counselors, social workers, psychologists, and instructional coordinators. Nationwide, non-teaching staff increased by 22.8% between 2002 and 2023, while public school enrollment only ticked up by 4.1%. 

This raises important questions, such as whether public schools have drifted too far from their academic mission and whether special education costs have gotten out of control.

Another reason teacher salaries aren’t increasing is that benefit spending has risen sharply, going from $2,221 per student in 2002 to $4,022 per student in 2023—an 81.1% increase. 

In 2023, employee benefit costs in New Jersey were the highest in the nation at $8,333 per student. In New York, the cost was $7,949 per student.

Research indicates that these costs are largely driven by teacher pension debt. States have failed to set aside enough funding to cover their pension promises, and now the bills are coming due. Benefit spending increased by 194.1% per student in Hawaii, 171.3% in Vermont, 169.9% in Illinois, 167.1% in New Jersey, and 166.4% in Pennsylvania.

Figure 2: Inflation-Adjusted Spending Per Student on Employee Benefits and Salaries (2002-2023)

But these aren’t the only structural issues. With enrollment falling by nearly 1.2 million students since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, public schools will need to become more efficient by closing schools and reducing staff counts. Available data suggest that school districts have been slow to close under-enrolled schools, and the number of non-teaching staff in public schools has increased since 2020. This is unsustainable, especially since the National Center for Education Statistics projects that enrollment losses will persist for years to come.

There are no quick fixes, but one thing is certain—policymakers can’t expect a good return on investment from public schools unless structural problems are addressed. Focusing on academics, paying down pension debt, and right-sizing schools are difficult but necessary reforms that can pay dividends in the long run. 

From the states

The New Jersey Senate Education Committee advanced a proposal that could significantly limit charter schools. It would ban virtual and prohibit charter school boards from contracting with for-profit entities to manage or operate the school, and “impose residency requirements for some charter school trustees,” the New Jersey Monitor reported. Harry Lee, the president of the New Jersey Charter School Association, argued that this legislation could be “read as a moratorium on charters.”

What to watch

Also in New Jersey, on the campaign trail, Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill supported expanding the state’s Interdistrict Public School Choice Program–a form of open enrollment. This policy is in much need of reform and hopefully she will keep this campaign promise. As of the 2023-24 school year, more than 5,000 students used it to attend public schools other than their assigned ones. Despite being operational for more than 25 years, participation is one of the lowest in the nation due to an artificial cap imposed by then-Gov. Chris Christie’s administration in 2012. 

The New Hampshire Supreme Court issued a decision clarifying the state’s cross-district open enrollment law, which allows students to transfer to schools in other districts. The court stated that every school district must have an open enrollment policy and that a transfer student’s home district is responsible for 80% of tuition costs, even if the home district’s policy is not to have an open enrollment policy. New Hampshire’s law ranks 21st among the 50 states nationwide, according to Reason Foundation’s open enrollment best practices, but the state scored just 45 out of 100 points, receiving an F grade for its transfer policies.

Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville), expressed interest in expanding the state’s private school scholarship program. Launched last year, the program provided $7,300 scholarships to 20,000 students to pay for private school tuition. While the program is scheduled to increase the total number of scholarships available to 25,000 during the 2026 school year, Sexton argued that the expansion should be greater, as 42,000 students applied for scholarships.

The latest from Reason Foundation

–Public schools without boundaries 2025: Ranking every state’s open enrollment laws

–Policymakers are increasingly supportive of public school choice

–Open enrollment is an important part of school choice in California

–Los Angeles Unified School District celebrates mediocre test scores

Recommended reading 

Ohio school districts shouldn’t be allowed to declare students “impractical” to transport

Aaron Churchill at the Fordham Institute

“Ohio districts have used this loophole to deny transportation to thousands of public charter and private school students—and this was the way Columbus ducked their transportation responsibilities last year…Statewide, almost 23,000 charter and private school students were declared impractical last year (roughly 8 percent), while only 592 out of more than 1.4 million district students—a miniscule fraction—were deemed as such. In other words, non-district students were nearly 200 times more likely to be denied transportation than students attending district schools.”

Contested questions in public schools

Ilana Redstone at National Affairs

“Despite the post-pandemic increase in the popularity of private schools and homeschooling, the vast majority of American children have continued, and likely will continue, to receive a public education. However, doing so in an institution that hasn’t acknowledged its failures ensures that both the educational crisis and its associated erosion of democratic norms will persist. This means that rebuilding trust in this institution matters — although doing so will require us to first understand how public schools lost their way.”

Rulemaking must resolve ambiguities in federal school choice law—and fast

Jim Blew at Education Next

“Governors should be prevented from adding requirements not found in the federal law, such as prohibiting SGOs from focusing on specific student groups or educational approaches. Similarly, new governors should not be allowed to remove an organization from a state’s list unless that organization falls out of legal compliance; this stipulation would preempt the sudden disruption of a student’s education due to politics.”

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Are you a state or local policymaker interested in education reform? Reason Foundation’s education policy team can help you make sense of complex school finance data and discuss innovative reform options that expand students’ educational opportunities. Please reach out to me directly at jude.schwalbach@reason.org for more information.

The post Funding Education Opportunity: Study examines K-12 education spending, teachers’ salaries and benefit costs appeared first on Reason Foundation.

California’s current K-12 cross-district open enrollment laws, which are supposed to allow public school students to transfer to public schools outside their assigned school districts, are overly restrictive, complicated and in need of reform.

California’s current open enrollment laws earned a grade of D-, scoring 62 out of 100 possible points, from Reason Foundation’s latest ranking of every state’s open enrollment transfer laws. The state’s cross-district open enrollment programs—the District of Choice and Interdistrict Permit System—don’t guarantee students transfer opportunities to schools in other districts even if open seats are available.

The District of Choice program is limited to students whose districts opt into the program. In districts that opt in, transfers don’t need permission from their assigned districts to leave, and participating districts can’t discriminate against applicants based on their abilities or personal characteristics. This would be a good policy. Unfortunately, during the 2025-26 school year, only 42 districts, or 4% of California’s 937 districts, chose to participate in the program.

The state’s Interdistrict Permit System, on the other hand, is significantly more restrictive. Before transferring, students must receive permission from both the receiving district and their assigned one, either of which can veto the application. Unlike the District of Choice program, transfer applicants are considered on a case-by-case basis, regardless of whether the school has openings.

Both of these policies fail to maximize students ‘ options because districts can either choose not to participate or limit the number of transfers, regardless of their available capacity.

Programs like these prevent students from accessing schools with better academic offerings. For example, in 2016 and 2012, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) found that many students used the District of Choice program to access schools that scored better on state tests. This finding is consistent with open enrollment transfer data from Texas, Florida, Wisconsin, and Arizona.

The LAO’s reports also showed that students used open enrollment to access specialized courses, such as Advanced Placement and pre-university International Baccalaureate classes.

Robust open enrollment options can make a big difference for public school students. A 2023 study published by The University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics showed that academic achievement and college enrollment improved for students using the Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) within-district open enrollment option, especially when compared to their non-participating peers.

Better academics isn’t the only reason students use open enrollment. Some California students used it to escape bullying. In other states with successful programs, families use to improve their school and work commutes, transfer to schools with smaller class sizes, and find schools that best fit their needs.

Students aren’t the only ones to benefit from strong open enrollment laws, school districts do too. The LAO reports showed that some districts that initially lost students via open enrollment were able to reverse these declines after responding to requests from parents, such as adding math and science classes.

When districts need to attract students, they are motivated to improve and demonstrate to families that their schools are a good place to be. The Becker Friedman Institute study found that LAUSD’s worst-performing schools improved the most after implementing open enrollment.

Open enrollment is a win-win for students and districts. Additionally, improving California’s cross-district transfer policies would improve the state’s open enrollment grade in the Reason Foundation’s report, from a D- to an A-.

California’s public schools need to do a better job of offering parents and students what they need. Students should attend schools that best meet their needs and plans. Allowing kids to transfer to any public school with open seats would go a long way in improving student achievement and satisfaction with the state’s public school system.

A version of this column first appeared at The Orange County Register

The post Open enrollment is an important part of school choice for California appeared first on Reason Foundation.

My annual open enrollment study grades and ranks every state’s open enrollment laws based on seven best practices, as shown in Table 1.

Using Reason Foundation’s open enrollment best practices as a measure: 16 states have statewide cross-district open enrollment laws, 17 states have statewide within-district open enrollment laws, 27 states make public schools free to all students, 10 states make public schools open to all students, five states publish transparent state-level open enrollment reports; eight states make open enrollment policies and availability transparent at the district-level, and four states have a robust appeals process for denied transfer applicants. 

As with the 2024 edition, Oklahoma continues to lead the nation with the best open enrollment policy, scoring 99 out of 100 points thanks to a well-rounded law that lets kids transfer to public schools with openings, bans tuition charges for transfer students, and offers data and transparency to parents and policymakers. 

Thanks to an improvement that established a statewide within-district open enrollment law and improved transparency provisions, Arkansas now has the second-best policy in the nation, scoring 98 out of 100 points, surpassing Idaho, last year’s second-place state, which now ranks third.

Based on the Reason Foundation’s examination of open enrollment laws, six states—Oklahoma, Arkansas, Idaho, Arizona, West Virginia, and Utah–received “A” grades this year. 

Generally, these states tend to have excellent open enrollment laws, allowing students to transfer to any public school with available openings. However, their laws could be further improved by increased data sharing at the state- and district-levels or more effective appeal processes. 

Seven states — Florida, Kansas, Colorado, Delaware, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wisconsin — received “B” grades in the report.

Two states—North Dakota and Montana—received “C” grades.

Two states — Iowa and California — earned “D” grades. California could improve its inter-district transfer laws and move all the way up to an “A” grade.

The remaining 33 states scored an “F.” 

Table 1: Reason Foundation’s open enrollment best practices

Three states that received an “F” grade still improved their overall scores from last year’s report.

Nevada codified a strong within-district open enrollment policy and adopted good state- and district-level transparency provisions, improving its score from 35/100 points to 51/100 points. It now ranks 17th overall, tied with Minnesota and Massachusetts.

Similarly, New Hampshire established a strong within-district open enrollment law, improving its score from 35/100 to 45/100 points. It now ties for 21st place with Connecticut, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania.

South Carolina has made its open enrollment policy more transparent at the district level, scoring 37 out of 100 points — an improvement of one point.

Lastly, Missouri’s open enrollment score dropped from 35/100 points to 5/100 points, ranking second-to-last, alongside Alabama and Virginia. This occurred because the state’s highly restrictive cross-district transfer options — the Metropolitan Schools Achieving Value in Transfer Corporation and Voluntary Interdistrict Choice Corporation — are either defunct or no longer accepting transfer applicants. As a result, Missouri has no cross-district transfer options.

Alaska, Maine, Maryland, and North Carolina continue to rank dead last, scoring zero out of 100 points. 

A detailed summary of the study, including its rankings and grades for every state, as well as its methodology, is available here. 

The full report, Public Schools Without Boundaries, is available here (PDF). 

Previous editions of the study can be found here.

If you have any thoughts or questions about the report, your state’s policies, or open enrollment, I’d love to hear them.

The post Funding Education Opportunity: Grading and ranking every state’s open enrollment laws appeared first on Reason Foundation.

K-12 open enrollment allows students to transfer to public schools other than their residentially assigned schools, provided space is available. Parents with children in school widely support this policy. Polling from June 2025 by EdChoice-Morning Consult showed that 78% of school parents—including 84% of Republicans, 80% of Democrats, and 72% of Independents—support open enrollment. Moreover, of this subgroup, 84% of Republicans, 80% of Democrats, and 72% of Independents support the policy.

Additionally, “Yes. every kid” released national polling in November 2024 that showed that 65% of Americans support letting students attend schools that are the right fit for them, regardless of where they live or their families’ financial circumstances. Moreover, 58% of respondents support ending residential assignment—the practice of assigning students to schools based on where they live—in public schools.

Open enrollment policies can help many students find public schools that are the right fit for them. Strengthening these policies would be a significant boon to the 49.4 million students enrolled in public schools in all 50 states.

About 39.4 million students, or 80% of students enrolled in public schools, reside in states with weak or ineffective open enrollment laws. This study finds that only 16 states had strong open enrollment laws in 2024.

However, four states—Arkansas, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina—significantly improved their open enrollment laws during the 2025 legislative sessions.

At the same time, policymakers in 24 states introduced at least 54 bills that would have improved open enrollment laws if codified according to the Reason Foundation’s open enrollment best practices. On the other hand, one proposal introduced in Oklahoma would have significantly undermined states’ strong open enrollment laws.

This study, the 4th edition of Public Schools Without Boundaries, updates Reason Foundation’s 2024 ratings and rankings of states’ open enrollment laws, highlights the latest open enrollment research, and provides other developments related to open enrollment.

New Research on K-12 Open Enrollment

Reason Foundation’s previous reports on open enrollment included the latest research examining its benefits, common weaknesses in states’ policies, and the most recent data available from states with open enrollment policies. Since then, education researchers have published new studies on the topic.

This section reviews the most recent open enrollment data available, examines how the policy benefits students, highlights barriers to effective policy, and demonstrates that many states’ and districts’ open enrollment data and practices lack transparency.

New Data on Open Enrollment Participation

A Reason Foundation study of 19 states found that more than 1.6 million students used open enrollment to attend schools other than their assigned ones. Additionally, a 2025 report by the Bluegrass Institute estimated that approximately 26,000 students used cross-district open enrollment in Kentucky during the 2023-24 school year to attend brick-and-mortar schools. Combined with Reason Foundation’s research, more than 1,627,000 students used open enrollment in 20 states.

Reason Foundation’s 2025 study, “Open Enrollment by the Numbers,” reveals that, on average, 16% of students used public funds to attend a school of their choice through open enrollment, charter schools, or private school scholarships in 19 states. Students using open enrollment accounted for 7% of publicly funded students in these states, on average. Using the freshest data from each state, Figure 1 below shows the different schooling options students paid for with public funds in each state.

However, participation often varied depending on the strength of a state’s open enrollment law. For instance, on average, students using open enrollment accounted for 10% of students enrolled in public schools in states with strong open enrollment laws, whereas they accounted for only 6% of students in public schools in states with weak open enrollment.

Based on data available from 10 states, the study also found that more than two in five students using open enrollment came from low-income households, accounting for about 148,000 transfers. Additionally, one in 10 transfers in these states were also students with disabilities (SWD), benefiting about 121,000 students.

Open Enrollment Benefits Students

Continuing trends from previous years, students participating in Arizona’s, Florida’s, and Texas’ student transfer programs tended to transfer to public school districts that were ranked higher by the state.

In Arizona, 90% of cross-district transfers enrolled in districts rated as A or B; in Florida, 94% of cross-district transfers enrolled in districts rated as A or B; and in Texas, 95% of cross-district transfers enrolled in districts rated as A or B.

Overall, more than 294,000 students in these states transferred to districts rated as A or B by their state education agencies (SEAs).

Barriers to Open Enrollment

Only six states—Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and West Virginia—allow students to transfer via open enrollment year-round. While laws in 19 states ensure a restricted transfer window, 25 states have no law addressing districts’ transfer windows.

The most common reason school districts in Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Wisconsin denied open enrollment transfers was insufficient capacity. Specifically, data from Nebraska and Wisconsin showed that 24% and 20% of rejected applicants were rejected because of lack of space in special education programs. Wisconsin’s data continued trends from previous years, showing that school districts deny students with disabilities at higher rates than their non-disabled peers.

This level of data wasn’t available for other states.

Open Enrollment Data Are Often Opaque

State education agencies often only collect limited open enrollment data. This is bad because families, taxpayers, and policymakers lack the tools to assess the impact of or demand for open enrollment programs. SEAs in 19 states were able to provide the number of students using open enrollment from recent school years. Two states–Utah and Idaho–did not collect data on the number of transfers.

Additional information, such as the number of rejected applicants or why they were denied, was often not available. Out of the 21 states reviewed, only five states—Idaho, Oklahoma, Nebraska, West Virginia, and Wisconsin—tracked the number of rejected applicants, but only three of these (Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Wisconsin) tracked rejected applicants by denial category.

Districts Often Let Transparency Fall by the Wayside

Just eight states continue to require public school districts to publish their available capacity by grade level and their open enrollment policies and procedures on their websites under state law. School districts also struggle to ensure that the open enrollment process is transparent, even when required to do so by state law.

A key component of district-level transparency is publishing the number of seats available by grade level on each district’s website. This ensures that families are aware of vacancies before submitting transfer applications.

However, many districts don’t comply with state laws that require them to make open enrollment information available online. For example, 77% of Oklahoma’s school districts comply with a state law that requires them to post their available capacity online, according to a 2025 analysis.

However, of the districts that published this information, 36% had the most recent data, and 29% had outdated data. Even when data were available, this analysis found that it was often difficult to locate on district websites. Therefore, this study recommends that school districts reconsider their practices and ensure that information about their available capacity is easily accessible on their websites, improving transparency for families and researchers.

Similarly, a report studied Utah’s school districts’ practices regarding posting their available capacity on their websites, as required by state law. The report found that most school districts don’t fully comply with state law by making their available capacity easily accessible on their websites. Only six districts published an open enrollment report as described in state statute, 15 districts published a partial capacity report, and while 20 districts did not publish a capacity report in any form, their websites gave information about open enrollment.

An audit of six Kansas districts’ reported available capacity called into question their accuracy. In particular, the report showed that even though five of the districts collectively lost more than 5,000 students since 2019, the districts’ only claimed they had space for about 2,000 transfer students during the 2024-25 school year.

Moreover, Wichita Public Schools (WPS), the largest school district in Kansas, did not comply with state law, which requires all districts to post their available capacity on their websites. Since 2019, WPS’ student counts have dropped by more than 2,600 students. These discrepancies led the author to recommend penalizing districts for misreporting their available capacity and to define the term “capacity.” In particular, he recommended basing available capacity on building capacity rather than staffing capacity.

Open Enrollment Can Weaken the Effects of Housing Redlining

School district and attendance zone boundaries in Missouri and California continue to replicate housing redlining policies that aimed to segregate neighborhoods and schools in the early 20th century, according to a 2025 Available to All report, a nonpartisan watchdog organization. It identified three instances where Missouri school districts were affected by these boundaries, which continue to limit students’ schooling options based on where they live.

Similarly, in California’s Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)—the second-largest school district in the nation—Available to All identified eight instances where the district’s attendance zones were redlined. These attendance zones housed some of LAUSD’s elite public schools and excluded students from nearby neighborhoods who were assigned to lower-performing schools. The authors suggested that strong open enrollment laws can help students access schools that are a better fit.

Open Enrollment Best Practices

Seven key components characterize robust open enrollment laws. In Reason’s calculations, states only receive credit for each metric if it is clearly included in their open enrollment laws.

Open Enrollment Rankings and Methodology

Rankings assign letter grades to each state’s policy, identifying weaknesses and strengths in their laws. This system ranks open enrollment policies on a scale of 0-100, assigning grades “A,” “B,” “C,” “D,” and “F” to states based on their rankings. “A” would correspond to a score of 90+, “B” to 80+, “C” to 70+, and “D” to 60+. All lower scores are ranked as “F.” States receive full credit when they meet a metric, and partial credit when a metric is only partially met.

#1 Statewide cross-district open enrollment = 60 points.

This practice typically expands public school choice the most for students. Since it offers the most educational options, its weight is significantly greater than others, giving states a significant boost in achieving a higher rank. States with voluntary or limited cross-district open enrollment receive partial credit, valued at 30 points.

#2 Statewide within-district open enrollment = 15 points.

This is the second most valuable metric since it expands schooling options for students living inside a district’s geographic boundaries. This reform is worth fewer points since it’s easier to achieve because students and their education dollars remain inside the assigned district. States with voluntary or limited within-district open enrollment receive partial credit, valued at 5 points.

#3 School districts free to all students = 10 points.

Tuition can be a major barrier to transfer students, especially when it costs thousands of dollars. Removing this barrier is an important victory for students whose families cannot afford to pay public school tuition. There is no partial credit for this metric.

#4 School districts open to all students = 5 points.

State law should make clear to school districts that access to public schools shouldn’t depend on an applicant’s ability or disability. Open enrollment laws that clearly state that school districts cannot discriminate against transfer applicants based on their disability receive 3 points, while states that stop school districts from discriminating against applicants based on their ability, i.e., academic achievement, GPA, past or future academic record, receive 2 points. The former is of higher value since students with disabilities have not always had equal access to education.

#5 Transparent SEA reports = 4 points.

These reports ensure policymakers, families, and taxpayers can hold school districts accountable for their open enrollment practices. Because this metric often only requires tweaks to existing reports, making it an easier reform, each component is valued at one point. To receive credit, states must codify that the SEA publishes district-level open enrollment data in an annual report, which includes the number of transfer students (1 point), the number of rejected applicants (1 point), and the reasons why applicants were rejected (1 point).

#6 Transparent district reporting = 4 points.

States that require districts to post their policies and procedures on their websites receive 2 points; requiring districts to post their available capacity by grade level earns a state an additional 2 points. If a state requires a district to post its available capacity, but not by grade level, it receives 1 point.

#7 Transfer applicants can appeal rejected applications = 2 points.

States that require school districts to provide rejected applicants with the reasons for their denial in writing receive 1 point, while those that offer an external appeals process to rejected applicants receive an additional point.

Ranking Every State’s Open Enrollment Policies

The most common weaknesses in states’ open enrollment laws are poor appeals processes or insufficiently transparent SEA reports. No state fully meets all seven metrics.

However, Oklahoma and Arkansas fully meet six out of seven metrics. Only Idaho fully meets just five out of seven metrics, and only Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Utah, and West Virginia fully meet just four out of seven metrics.

Using Reason Foundation’s best practices checklist as a measure: 16 states have statewide cross-district open enrollment, 17 states have statewide within-district open enrollment, 28 states make public schools free to all students, 10 states make public schools open to all students, five states’ SEAs publish annual open enrollment reports, eight states have transparent district reporting, and four states have a strong appeals process.

Based on these metrics, six states–Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia–are ranked as “A”, seven states are ranked as “B”, two states are ranked as “C”, two states are ranked as “D”, and 33 states score an “F.”

Table 3 presents each state’s grade and ranking in relation to Reason Foundation’s best open enrollment practices.

Note: See Hawaii Summary for an explanation of its score.

The post Public schools without boundaries 2025: Ranking every state’s open enrollment laws appeared first on Reason Foundation.

“This is not just a rebound. This is a breakthrough. We didn’t just meet expectations–we exceeded them,” boasted LAUSD Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho.

If these test results are the definition of a breakthrough success, LAUSD’s bar for student achievement wasn’t particularly high.

Despite the recent gains, LAUSD’s latest scores show that less than 47% of students met or exceeded their grade-level standard in English Language Arts. Moreover, just 36 percent were at or above the grade-level standard in math, meaning nearly two in three students didn’t meet the basic standard.

It’s a positive that LAUSD’s test scores are about on par with California’s average statewide results from the previous school year (full 2024-25 results have not yet been released). However, statewide results have also not recovered from their post-pandemic slump, when the number of students who met or exceeded the standard for both English and math declined by four percent compared to the 2018-19 school year.

The state and school district have a long way to go to improve their academics, but producing higher test scores can be part of an effort to win back families who have left for alternatives such as charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Los Angeles Unified School District has lost more than 70,000 students.

In addition to the kids opting for other schools, LAUSD also has an absentee problem. As of the 2023-24 school year, nearly one in three LAUSD students were chronically absent, meaning that they missed 10% or more of the school year. This means that over 130,000 LAUSD students cumulatively missed at least 2.3 million days of school that school year. The problem was most prevalent among high school students, with about 37% of them categorized as chronically absent.

To the district’s credit, the latest absentee rate is an improvement from the 2021-22 school year, when more than 45% of students were chronically absent. However, the current rate of chronic absenteeism remains well above pre-pandemic levels, when only 18% of LAUSD students were categorized as such during the 2018-19 school year.

To encourage students to return to school, the district made home visits and provided wrap-around services, such as customized bussing, medical care, and even laundry services.

“For every one percent of daily attendance improvement, particularly for the most fragile students, we see a nine percent improvement in academic performance,” Superintendent Carvalho told The 74.

LAUSD needs to get students into classrooms and ensure they are learning once there. It’s a good sign that in recent years, LAUSD has adopted lesson plans based on the ‘science of reading,’ which examines how most kids learn and how to best teach them how to read. This aligns the district with decades of research on best practices associated with reading and could help many of its students, more than half of whom struggle to read.

Yet, the rollout and ensuring proper training for programs like this are essential to effective instruction. Scaling programs can be a challenge, especially for a district as large as LAUSD, which has a significant number of English learners and children from low-income families. A 2024 report by Families in Schools, an advocacy group, found that some LAUSD teachers in their survey were still unfamiliar with the term “science of reading,” admitting that they would need additional training on the concept and its associated lessons.

LAUSD has taken some crucial steps in the right direction, but much work remains to be done. Reducing chronic absenteeism and getting students to attend school regularly, along with training teachers on proven best practices that help kids learn math and reading, could be the start of a truly breakthrough success that’s more significant than this year’s slight improvement in test scores.

A version of this column first appeared in the Los Angeles Daily News

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Scholarship-granting organizations have yet to determine the amounts they’ll offer, but recipients will be able to use them to pay for approved education expenses, such as private school tuition, tutoring, and school uniforms. Moreover, many of the program’s details are still in flux because federal lawmakers have left a significant amount of discretion to the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury to establish rules governing the program. 

The letter of law appears to make students in traditional public schools or charter schools eligible. They could use “the funds to pay for items such as tutoring costs, test preparation courses, exam fees, internet services, and special-needs education,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Ian Rowe and Democrats for Education Reform’s Jorge Elorza argued.

Until the program’s rules-making process is finalized, many governors are likely to be hesitant about committing to participation. According to Education Week, many states will “await federal rules and guidance clarifying the provision” before making a decision on whether to participate. 

To date, only Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) and North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (D) have clearly announced plans to opt into the program, while Oregon’s Gov. Tina Kotek (D), New Mexico’s Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D), and Wisconsin’s Gov. Tony Evers (D) have said they’ll opt out of it. 

While there is no guarantee that they will participate, based on governors’ public statements and analyses of them by EdChoice and ExcelinEd, it appears that 26 governors support school choice policies, and 14 governors have outright opposed them. Table 1 summarizes the stances of governors on school choice policies nationwide. 

Table 1: Governors’ School Choice Stances, Various Sources

The decision by North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (D) to opt into the federal tax-credit scholarship program could be a harbinger of what’s to come in state governments that are divided over school choice. When Gov. Stein announced his intention to opt North Carolina into the federal tax-credit program, he also vetoed a state-level proposal that would have established a private school choice program, calling it unnecessary in light of the federal program.

This is because the new federal tax-credit scholarship has created a dilemma for staunch opponents of school choice programs. As the Fordham Institute’s Mike Petrilli explained: 

“Will Democratic leaders opt their states into the new federal school choice program, allowing families to accept scholarships that are funded by charitable donations from taxpayers nationwide—scholarships that don’t cost their state a penny, and therefore can’t be said to be taking any money from their public schools?

Or will they bow to the demands of the teachers’ unions and bar the schoolhouse door instead, creating a grand opportunity for GOP candidates running against them?”

National polling by EdChoice and Morning Consult found that 84% of parents supported school choice policies. Moreover, school choice policies are supported by 78% of Black parents and 83% of Latino parents.

Even if governors choose to opt out of the program, it’s not clear that the buck would stop with them in every case. The federal law states that decisions to participate must be made by a state governor or “by such other individual, agency, or entity as is designated under State law to make such elections on behalf of the State with respect to Federal tax benefits.”

Conflicts are likely to arise when state leaders disagree about who has the authority to opt in or out of the program, especially in states like Arizona, where the governor opposes school choice policies, but state legislators and agencies support them. This could lead to significant jousting between state officials in the years leading up to the program’s launch in 2027. 

However, much of this will be determined by the Department of the Treasury’s rulemaking. Governors typically opposed to school choice could be willing to opt into the program if the agency’s rules let them impose significant regulations on participating private schools or target the funds to students enrolled in public schools.

What to watch

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) introduced House Resolution (H.R.) 5181, which would reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, the federal city’s private school choice program, for another seven years. Since its launch in 2004, more than 12,000 low-income students in the District of Columbia have benefited from the program, receiving scholarships to pay for private school tuition. During the 2025-26 school year, elementary and high school students can receive scholarships valued at up to $10,000 and $15,000, respectively.

The Kentucky State Supreme Court is set to hear arguments this month about whether the state can fund charter schools. Since 2017, charter schools have been legal in Kentucky, but have lacked a funding mechanism. House Bill 9 was passed in 2022, which would let state and local education dollars follow students enrolling in charter schools. However, a Franklin County Circuit Judge ruled the law unconstitutional, stating that it would “establish a separate class of publicly funded but privately controlled schools” and create a “separate and unequal” system.

Laramie County District Judge Peter Froelicher denied the state’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit against Wyoming’s new private school scholarship program. Eligible recipients could use their $7,000 scholarship to cover a range of approved educational expenses, including private school tuition and tutoring.   

Recommended reading 

Risk Sharing: The Student Loan Reform Whose Time Has Come?
Preston Cooper at the American Enterprise Institute

“Requiring institutions to shoulder a portion of student loan risk would realign their incentives. Rather than maximizing student loan volume in any way possible, institutions would seek to disburse student loans only when they have a reasonable expectation that the loan will be repaid. While this would save taxpayers money, the primary beneficiaries would be students, who would face less pressure from institutions to take on debts they cannot afford. Going forward, lawmakers should keep in mind risk sharing as a tool for higher education accountability.”

COVID Worsened Long Decline in 12th-Graders’ Reading, Math Skills
Greg Toppo at The74

“The results, released Tuesday by the U.S. Education Department, are ‘sobering,’ said Matthew Soldner, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. He noted ‘significant declines in achievement’ among the lowest-performing students going back even before the pandemic. In one particularly grim indicator, a larger percentage of the Class of 2024 scored in the tests’ ‘below basic’ level in both math and reading than in any previous assessment dating back decades.”

Here Comes “The Big Shrink”
Marguerite Roza, Ph.D., at School Business Now

“Nationally, we can expect a 0.5% decline in enrollment per year. Some districts will be hit much harder. Over the next decade, Los Angeles Unified will lose about a third of its enrollment. None of this should be a surprise. When enrollment is down in the youngest grades, it means there are fewer students in the pipeline. Shrinking is hard. But it doesn’t have to erode systems and hurt students. With a strong plan, leaders can approach shrinking as a path toward a smaller, stronger, more nimble school system that better serves its remaining students.”

The post Funding Education Opportunity: How states are reacting to the new federal tax-credit scholarship appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Since then, public schools have struggled to get a significant number of students to attend class regularly. Before the pandemic, only about 15% of students nationwide were categorized as chronically absent, meaning they missed 18 days of school, or approximately 10% or more of the school year.

When public schools reopened from their pandemic closures, chronic absenteeism skyrocketed to unprecedented levels, with 31% of students being labeled chronically absent during the 2020-21 school year. While many schools have reduced chronic absenteeism since then, it remains well above pre-pandemic levels.

The latest data from 40 states showed that, on average, 24% of students were chronically absent during the 2023-24 school year. That means that 8.6 million students missed approximately 155 million days of school cumulatively. Figure 1 illustrates the number of students categorized as chronically absent in 40 states collected from state education agencies so far, and the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) Return 2 Learn Tracker.

Figure 1: Chronic absenteeism rates during the 2023-24 school year

Alaska has the worst rates of chronic absenteeism, with 43% of its students chronically absent during the 2023-24 school year. Florida, Michigan, New Mexico, and Oregon were the other states with chronic absenteeism at or above 30% of their students in the 2023-24 school year. 

Notably, absentee data from Texas during the 2023-24 school year, which accounts for 11% of students nationwide, is not yet available. The state’s previous data, however, showed high rates of chronic absenteeism, significantly exceeding pre-pandemic rates. California, which has the most public school students in the country, got its absenteeism down to 21% in the 2023-24 school year. 

So far, no state has returned to pre-pandemic levels of chronic absenteeism. The states to come closest to returning to pre-pandemic rates of chronic absenteeism are Alabama and Virginia. During the 2023-24 school year, 15% of students were categorized as such, just four percentage points more than during the 2018-19 school year in both states.

However, students from the so-called Covid Cohort have suffered fewer consequences for missing 10% or more of the school year than past generations, according to a 2025 analysis of 22 states by AEI researchers, Nat Malkus and Sam Hollon. 

“Our most conservative estimates indicate that if attendance mattered as much as it once did, 100,000 fewer students would have graduated in 2022 alone. That’s more than the total number of 12th graders in New Jersey,” they wrote in The Washington Post.

Malkus and Hollon attribute this shift to a failure on the part of school administrators to roll back temporary policies implemented at the height of the pandemic to accommodate students, such as minimizing consequences for late or missed homework, allowing students to retake tests, or expanding access to online credit-recovery programs.

School administrators who want to improve student attendance desperately need to reverse course if policies like these are still in place. 50CAN’s Liz Cohen argued that if incentives fail to motivate students to attend school, then school officials should impose serious consequences, such as holding students back a year or requiring summer school if they fail to meet the minimum attendance requirements. 

“Think this unfair? It’s hard to conceive of something more unfair to children than passing them from grade to grade without ensuring they accumulate sufficient knowledge and experience,” Cohen explained in The 74.

This autumn will mark the fifth full academic year since schools reopened from their pandemic-induced closures. It’s time that school administrators get students to attend school regularly. 

From the states

In other significant developments, New Hampshire policymakers codified a robust within-district open enrollment law while North Carolina’s tax-credit scholarship proposal was vetoed.

In New Hampshire, Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed Senate Bill 97-FN into law, codifying a statewide within-district open enrollment program. Students can now transfer to any public school within their residentially assigned school district with available seats. New Hampshire is the 17th state to establish a robust within-district open enrollment policy based on Reason’s open enrollment best practices.

North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein vetoed House Bill 87, which would have made North Carolina the first state to opt into the new federal tax-credit scholarship program. “School choice is good for students and parents, and I have long supported magnet and accountable charter schools because public schools open doors of opportunity for kids in every county of the state,” Stein said. “Once the federal government issues sound guidance, I intend to opt North Carolina in so we can invest in the public school students most in need of after-school programs, tutoring, and other resources.” However, Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger and Speaker Destin Hall hope to override the veto. The legislature has overridden the governor’s veto eight times this year already.

The latest from Reason Foundation

—New Hampshire could become the 17th state to adopt a strong within-district open enrollment law

—Improving Kentucky’s open enrollment program would help students and families

Recommended reading 

Plenty of schools have no-zeroes policies. And most teachers hate it, survey finds
Kalyn Belsha at Chalkbeat

“The most common practice — and the one that drew the most heated opposition in the fall 2024 survey — is not giving students zeroes for missing assignments or failed tests. Just over a quarter of teachers said their school or district has a no-zeroes policy. Around 3 in 10 teachers said their school or district allowed students to retake tests without penalty, and a similar share said they did not deduct points when students turned in work late. About 1 in 10 teachers said they were not permitted to factor class participation or homework into students’ final grades.”

It’s time for the left to come to the school choice table
Jorge Elorza at the Center on Reinventing Public Education

“If we want different results, then we need a different approach. A system of school choice where ‘the money follows the child’ is one of the most powerful student-centered levers available, and it can help reinvent American education. Progressives who continue to ignore this powerful tool are failing to embrace a 21st-century vision of public education, and they are denying students the academic and civic benefits that follow.”

A brighter future for K–12 education
Matthew Ladner at The Heritage Foundation

“Private organizations have supplanted state efforts to rate schools. The guardians of the education status quo cannot easily subvert private organizations, and the public has a greater degree of trust in them. In addition, private school rating platforms collect reviews, which research shows families value. Innovators have begun to expand these platforms beyond schools into a variety of education-service providers and to collect user reviews.”

Aug. 28, 2025, editor’s note: This newsletter has been updated to remove New York from states that haven’t reported 2023-24 absenteeism data.

The post Funding Education Opportunity: Chronic absenteeism rates remain too high years after pandemic appeared first on Reason Foundation.

However, state policymakers can expand students’ schooling options by strengthening Kentucky’s open enrollment law, which allows students to transfer to public schools other than their assigned ones. Enacted in 2021, this law required school districts to adopt cross-district transfer policies. But it falls short in removing barriers and enabling parents to choose a public school in another school district that best fits their children’s needs. 

For instance, the current policy allows school districts like highly rated Anchorage Independent to establish enrollment policies that accept no transfers even when seats are available. Other districts, such as Jefferson County, permit transfers only under restrictive conditions, such as living in a specific geographic area or having parents employed by the district.

A stronger open enrollment policy would ensure Kentucky students can transfer to any public school with open seats, prohibit public school districts from charging tuition to transfer students, and improve transparency, making the process more family-friendly.

Kentucky’s reluctance to fully embrace this policy by prioritizing district control over parental choice has resulted in one of the nation’s weakest open enrollment policies. According to a 2024 Reason Foundation report, only eight states have weaker open enrollment policies than Kentucky.

Despite these barriers, parents across the state are seizing upon the limited choices available. A recent Bluegrass Institute report shows that nonresident transfers have increased by 10% since the passage of House Bill 563 in 2021, with over 2,500 additional public school students enrolling in a different district.

In addition, enrollment at the Kentucky Virtual Academy (KYVA) more than doubled to over 3,000 students in the 2024-25 school year, its second year, up from 1,300 in 2023-24. Combined, Kentucky’s nonresident student enrollment has increased by more than 16% since 2022, indicating strong parental demand for public education alternatives.

About 5% of Kentucky’s students currently attend public schools other than their assigned ones. However, states with robust open enrollment laws see higher participation rates, averaging one in 10 students, compared to 5% in states with weak policies, according to a 2025 Reason Foundation report. In Colorado and Arizona, for example, 28% and 14% of students, respectively, attend traditional public schools other than their assigned ones. 

In December, the Kentucky Board of Education approved a regulation that would have immediately closed the fast-growing virtual academy, forcing thousands of students to return to schools that had failed them or to find other options. Lawmakers responded during this year’s General Assembly by passing legislation pausing the regulation for at least three years, allowing the KYVA to demonstrate academic improvement.

Strengthening Kentucky’s student-transfer policies would further empower families with the freedom to choose public schools – whether traditional or virtual – that best meet their children’s unique needs. 

Legislation introduced in recent General Assembly sessions offers a blueprint to improve Kentucky’s student-transfer policy by:

• Ensuring students can transfer to any public school with available seats.
• Eliminating tuition for nonresident students to ensure access for all families, regardless of income.
• Requiring school districts to publish clear information on capacities, vacancies and application processes, alongside detailed reports on enrollment and denials.
• Establishing a fair appeals process for transfer denials to protect parental rights.

By removing barriers and embracing transparency, Kentucky can join 16 states, such as Arizona and Florida, in leading the way on open enrollment policies, ensuring that every child in the state has access to a public education that sets them up for success.

A version of this column first appeared on LINKnky.com.

The post Improving Kentucky’s open enrollment program would help students and families appeared first on Reason Foundation.

If codified, this bill would ensure that students could transfer to any public school with open seats within their school district, allowing them to attend schools that are the right fit. It currently awaits the governor’s signature.

S.B. 97 would be an important step in the right direction for New Hampshire’s students. Per Reason Foundation’s 2024 national ranking of state open enrollment laws, New Hampshire has one of the worst policies in the nation–only seven states scored worse.

Robust open enrollment laws, like S.B. 97, guarantee that students can transfer to public schools with extra seats in their district. This helps students attend schools that are the right fit regardless of where they live. 

Research shows that strong within-district open enrollment policies, like S.B. 97, can help both students and schools improve. According to a 2023 Becker Friedman Institute report, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s within-district open enrollment policy positively affected participants, increasing student achievement and college enrollment, especially compared to non-participants. The authors also found that the lowest-performing schools improved the most, showing that these policies can benefit both students and schools. 

More broadly, students use open enrollment to escape bullying, access specialized courses, have smaller class sizes, or shorten their commutes. The latest national polling by EdChoice released in June 2025 showed that 78% of parents support open enrollment. Moreover, the policy’s support is bipartisan, with 80% of Democrats, 84% of Republicans, and 72% of Independents supporting it.  

Moreover, this support isn’t just talk. Reason Foundation found that 1.6 million students used open enrollment to attend schools that are the right fit, according to the freshest data from 19 states. Notably, 20% and 15% of students in Colorado and Delaware, respectively, used within-district open enrollment to attend schools other than their assigned ones.

This shows that strong open enrollment laws are an important form of school choice for students. Strengthening open enrollment laws so students are guaranteed transfer opportunities when extra seats are open is key to maximizing students’ schooling options.

State policymakers have taken note of open enrollment’s popularity. During the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers in 12 states introduced 25 proposals to establish robust within-district open enrollment. 

Eight of these proposals passed at least one legislative chamber, and two states–Arkansas and Nevada–codified them, increasing the number of states with these policies to 16.  If codified, S.B. 97 would make New Hampshire the 17th state to adopt a strong within-district open enrollment law. 

This would increase New Hampshire’s score on Reason Foundation’s annual open enrollment rankings from 35 to 45 points out of 100, scoring better than 18 other states. This means that New Hampshire would outscore or tie all of its New England neighbors, except for Vermont and Massachusetts.

New Hampshire should continue its policy of putting students first by establishing a statewide within-district program ensuring that students can attend public schools that are the right fit regardless of where they live.  

The post New Hampshire could become the 17th state to adopt a strong within-district open enrollment law appeared first on Reason Foundation.

However, this loss of public school students and funding for them shouldn’t come as a shock to state policymakers and school districts. Before the pandemic, 17 states, such as Illinois and Michigan, were already experiencing declining enrollment. 

One major contributing factor to declining K-12 enrollments is the birth dearth: fewer babies means fewer students. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of births in the U.S. decreased by 16% between 2007 and 2024, resulting in nearly 700,000 fewer children being born in the US in 2024 than in 2007. 

Fewer kids being born, combined with increased competition from private and charter schools, put lower enrollment rates on the horizon for many states. The pandemic exposed parents to many more educational options and made the enrollment decline happen faster and worse than expected in some cases. 

These lower student counts have significant implications for school district finances because education funding is generally based on the number of students enrolled. When school budgets shrink due to significantly fewer students, districts have to rightsize through a combination of staff reductions, school closures, or other cost-cutting measures. 

But many school districts delayed closures, relying on federal COVID-19 relief funds to keep their under-enrolled schools afloat. 

Reason Foundation research examined school closures in the 15 states that provided data, including California, New York, and Florida. Table 1 below shows the relationship between school closures and enrollment fluctuations before and after the pandemic’s onset in these 15 states.

Table 1: Public school closures before and after 2020

For example, as California’s enrollment declined by 0.9%, more than 55,000 students, between 2018 and 2020, the state’s school districts closed 63 schools. Yet only 65 schools closed in California between 2020 and 2024, when the state’s public school student counts plummeted by 5.2%, or nearly 325,000 students.

By contrast, Colorado’s public school districts faced the reality of declining enrollments sooner. Only 12 schools closed in Colorado between 2018 and 2020 as the state’s student population increased by about 0.3%. Yet this growth was reversed after the pandemic. Colorado closed 51 schools, as its public student counts dropped by 5.2%, or almost 48,000 fewer students, between 2020 and 2024. 

Unfortunately, Colorado’s initiative wasn’t the norm. Data from these 15 states showed that most delayed school closures, likely because they had federal funds temporarily bolstering their budgets. If this enrollment and closure trend holds in the other 35 states, it means that widespread school closures will likely need to occur in the coming years, as districts are forced to close or consolidate schools to reflect lower student counts and reduced funding.

To make closures fair and cost-effective, state lawmakers should have a process to identify empty schools. For example, when the student counts in Indiana school districts decline by 10% over a five-year period, they must review school building occupancy and identify schools that could be closed.  

Right-sizing schools and increasing transparency aren’t the only reforms available to policymakers. They can eliminate unfair funding protections, such as hold harmless provisions that provide funding based on outdated student enrollment figures and give districts funding for students who no longer attend those schools, spreading resources thin.

Notably, 15 out of the 16 states with declining enrollment provisions that give districts money based on outdated student counts experienced overall enrollment declines since 2020. These states are ripe for education funding reform. A better policy is to base education funding on current student counts so school districts have incentives to rightsize when their local enrollments drop. 

In the post-pandemic K-12 education landscape, there are fewer students enrolling in traditional public schools than in previous decades. Combined with the birth dearth, it’s unlikely that public school enrollments will rebound in the near future. This makes it imperative that policymakers and school leaders implement reforms that fund students and streamline school closures.

From the states

In other significant developments, policymakers in New Hampshire took a step forward on K-12 open enrollment while Vermont took a step backward, and a federal school choice bill became law.

In New Hampshire, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 97-FN, codifying a statewide within-district open enrollment program. Students can now transfer to any public school inside their residentially-assigned school district with open seats. The bill currently awaits Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s signature.

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott signed House Bill 454, which limits how families can use public dollars to pay for private school tuition. Previously, students who lived in school districts that didn’t serve their grade level could use public education funds to pay for tuition at the private school of their choice. Under the new law, however, eligible students cannot use their education funds to pay for private schools located outside of Vermont or for private schools located inside a school district that offers schooling at all grade levels, likely excluding private schools in areas with denser populations. Moreover, only private schools where 25% or more of students are publicly funded are eligible to receive public funds. This new law is a major blow to Vermont’s private school scholarship program, the oldest in the nation. 

At the federal level, President Donald Trump signed the Educational Choice for Children Act into law, codifying the first federal tax-credit scholarship program. Eligible students must come from households whose incomes don’t exceed 300% of the median gross income of their locality, according to the K-12 Dive. Scholarships are only available to students who live in states that opt into the federal program. Students can use their scholarships to cover approved educational expenses, including tuition, tutoring, transportation, and homeschooling costs.

What to watch

In Ohio, a Franklin County Judge ruled that the state’s EdChoice Scholarship, a voucher program benefiting 140,000 students, is unconstitutional. However, the judge did not order the program to stop until after appeals, acknowledging that shutting down the program would cause “significant change to school funding in Ohio,” according to The74. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has appealed the ruling.

In Wyoming, a Laramie County district judge paused the implementation of the state’s private school scholarship program, which was codified during the 2024 and 2025 legislative sessions. The ruling said the program likely violates the state constitution, which “bars the legislature from appropriating money for educational or benevolent purposes to any person or entity ‘not under the absolute control of the state,’” according to the Cowboy State Daily.

Recommended reading 

Democrats’ School Choice Dilemma
Michael J. Petrilli in The Wall Street Journal

“It’s a tough dilemma. Will Democratic leaders opt their states into the new federal school choice program, allowing families to accept scholarships that are funded by charitable donations from taxpayers nationwide—scholarships that don’t cost their state a penny, and therefore can’t be said to be taking any money from their public schools?Or will they bow to the demands of the teachers unions and bar the schoolhouse door instead, creating a grand opportunity for GOP candidates running against them?”

New Federal Tax Credit Boosts School Choice—But Blue States Face Big Decision
Matt Barnum in The Wall Street Journal

“The law, enacted earlier this month, will soon allow taxpayers to redirect a portion of their tax bill to nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations or SGOs. The taxpayer could write a check of up to $1,700 to an SGO but get that full amount back via a reduction of the same amount in their income taxes, instead of a regular tax deduction for the donation. It is a donation that doesn’t ultimately cost the donor anything.”

Parents Win Key Supreme Court Test in Mahmoud v. Taylor
Joshua Dunn at Education Next

“Recognizing what a disaster the case was for the school district and the public education establishment, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten lamented on X that the case “should have been worked out on a local level, it’s a shame it went all the way to SCOTUS. Parents must have a say about their own kids, they are our partners in education.” Except a belligerent school board that was too stubborn or mathematically challenged to count votes on the Supreme Court made that impossible.”

The post Funding Education Opportunity: School districts slow to close schools despite losing students appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Table 1 shows open enrollment participation in each of these states. 

Table 1: Open enrollment participation in 19 states

Public school transfer laws and policies vary widely by state. These 19 states were examined because they could provide data on open enrollment transfers. Colorado and Delaware have the highest participation rates in their programs, with about one in four students using open enrollment. 

The report also details open enrollment participation in other publicly funded K-12 education options. Between students using open enrollment, charter schools, and private school scholarships, about 16% of students choose publicly funded education options other than their residentially assigned schools in the 19 states examined. 

Figure 1 shows how many students use publicly funded private and public school choice programs in comparison to those who remain in their assigned public schools in these states.

Figure 1: Publicly funded K-12 education options

Of these 19 states, Arizona stands out the most. Over a third, 35% of Arizona’s publicly funded students chose education alternatives through open enrollment, charter schools, and private school scholarships during the 2022-23 school year. Open enrollment accounted for 10% of these students in the Grand Canyon State. 

After Arizona, students in Colorado, Delaware, and Wisconsin chose publicly funded alternatives to their residentially assigned public schools at the highest rates.

As more states expand and adopt universal private school scholarships and strong open enrollment laws, even more students will participate in these programs. In 2025, Texas, Arkansas, and Indiana established or significantly strengthened their school choice laws. 

Reason Foundation obtained data from seven states showing that open enrollment participation generally increases over time, as families become more familiar with their choices. Figure 2 shows open enrollment participation trends in select states.

Figure 2: Open enrollment growth over time in seven states

Wisconsin, which publishes the most extensive open enrollment data, shows that open enrollment participation has increased by about 14% each year, growing from 2,500 participants during the 1998-99 school year to nearly 61,000 participants during the 2023-24 school year. 

Accordingly, states that recently launched their open enrollment programs, such as West Virginia, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, will likely see increased participation rates in future years. 

More states should maximize students’ transfer opportunities by codifying strong open enrollment policies. These laws can make a big difference in students’ transfer opportunities. On average, about 10% of students transferred via open enrollment in states with strong open enrollment laws, while only about 6% of students used it in states with weaker laws that allow public school districts to reject transfer students. This underscores the importance of adopting stronger open enrollment policies in the 34 states with weak ones. 

In the 2026 legislative sessions, state policymakers should support strong open enrollment policies so more public school students can attend schools that are the right fit, regardless of where they live.

From the States

In other important education and school choice developments, policymakers in New Hampshire, Louisiana and Nevada consider school choice proposals.

In Louisiana, the Senate Finance Committee cut $50 million from the LA GATOR private school scholarship program. The proposal provides $44 million to fund 6,000 scholarships for existing participants, but it eliminates the expansion backed by Gov. Jeff Landry and the House, which aimed to add 5,300 new scholarships to the program. 

Gov. Joe Lombardo signed Nevada Senate Bill 460 into law. This bill would establish a statewide within-district open enrollment program to let students attend public schools inside their district other than their assigned one with open seats. Nevada’s open enrollment program would improve its score by 15 points, improving its overall score to 50 out of 100 points in Reason Foundation’s next annual evaluation of every state’s open enrollment best practices.

New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed Senate Bill 295, which expands student eligibility for the state’s Education Freedom Accounts–private school scholarships—by removing the income cap. Program participation will be capped at 10,000 students during the 2025-26 school year, but after that, the cap will automatically increase “by 25% in any year when applications exceed 90% of the limit,” ExcelinEd in Action reported. According to EdChoice, 5,600 students received an account during the 2024-25 school year, which can be used to pay for private school tuition, textbooks, and other approved education expenses. 

What to Watch

The U.S. Supreme Court was deadlocked 4-4 on St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond. As a result, the Oklahoma State Supreme Court’s ruling that a publicly-funded religious charter school violates the separation of church and state remains in place.  

New data from Step Up for Students, the organization that administers education choice scholarships, showed nearly 1.8 million students, 51% of the state’s K-12 students, used some sort of school choice option during the 2023-24 school year. 

The Latest from Reason Foundation

–Strengthening open enrollment laws is key to unlocking public school choice for kids

–Which K-12 finance systems foster school choice?

–How LAUSD can start grappling with budget deficit, declining enrollment 

–Don’t trust the federal government with the nation’s largest school choice program

Recommended reading 

The pandemic is over. It’s time for schools to get the message.
American Enterprise Institute’s Nat Malkus and Sam Hollon at The Washington Post

“All signs indicate that many more of today’s students are falling behind academically but are still being allowed to graduate. What this means in practice is that more students will leave school underprepared for the world of college or work. School leaders need to act now to reset basic expectations — including consistent school attendance — for graduates, or pandemic exceptionalism will become the new normal.”

ESA rules review: Improving rulemaking for ESA programs
Jenny Clark, Michael Clark, and George Khalaf at State Policy Network

“While procedural and administrative rules are necessary for efficient program management, substantive decisions—such as determining eligible expenses and qualifying education providers—must remain in the hands of elected lawmakers. Otherwise, agencies risk overstepping their bounds, either by imposing burdensome restrictions or by slowly reshaping the program away from its intended purpose. ”

Schools closing in Arizona? Blame the failing schools, not school choice
Heritage Foundation’s Jason Bedrick and Matthew Ladner at The Daily Signal

“Critics claim that school choice “diverts funding.” But public education dollars are meant for students, not systems. In Arizona, when families leave a district school for a charter or private school, or to another district, the funding follows the child to the learning environment that works best for him or her—and away from one that didn’t. That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. That’s the system working to be responsive to the needs of students and their families.”

The post Funding Education Opportunity: Study finds more than 1.6 million students using K-12 open enrollment in 19 states appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Portable education funds are dollars sensitive to student enrollment, meaning school districts gain or lose funding with changes in student counts. Public schools generally lose funding when enrollment falls, but K-12 funding systems vary substantially across states.

Reason Foundation’s funding portability metric measures the strength of this relationship, looking exclusively at state and local education funding. The main benefits of having a higher portability score are:

• Compatibility with Private School Choice: When education funds are sensitive to enrollment, dollars can follow the child to public school alternatives.
• Compatibility with Public School Choice: Public schools have greater financial incentives to accept transfer students when greater shares of education funds accompany them across district lines.
• Better Incentives: Public schools have a stronger incentive to be responsive to parents’ needs when funding tracks closely with enrollment.
• Efficiency: Tying public school funding to enrollment gains or losses ensures that resources aren’t held up in declining-enrollment school districts.

This analysis examines the K-12 finance systems in five states through a portability lens. With public education changing rapidly, policymakers must assess whether their approach to school finance can support a dynamic ecosystem characterized by parent choice, competition, and tightening state budgets. We start with a brief overview of our methodology, summarize each state’s portability score, and then compare these scores to school choice funding levels in each state. 

The takeaway from our findings is clear: K-12 finance formulas can substantially impact how school choice programs are funded, which in turn can affect the options available to students and the costs to taxpayers.

Methodology

The criteria used to calculate funding portability scores are summarized in Table 1 below. For each state, we gathered data, reports, and other information directly from state education agencies and other public sources. We used school finance documents, state statutes, and direct contact with state education agency officials for each funding source or allocation stream to determine whether it is provided to school districts based on marginal changes in student enrollment. Importantly, local dollars that contribute to state formula funding were considered similarly to state formula dollars since they are essentially allocated from one pot of funding.

Table 1: Funding Portability Score Criteria

_{This approach was developed based on the work of researchers at Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, to whom we owe a debt of gratitude. Our work does not replicate their methodology and has a distinct objective. However, the results of our research might be similar in some instances. For more information, see https://edunomicslab.org/category/student-based-allocation/.}

State Scores

The following section summarizes the results of our portability analysis in each of the five states examined: Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma.

1.      Arizona

In the 2023 fiscal year (FY), Arizona’s non-federal K-12 budget was $13 billion, or $11,503 per student. Of that amount, $10.5 billion, or $9,295 per student, is portable. As a result, Arizona’s portability score is 80.8%, the highest score of the five states examined.

Arizona’s public school funding is highly sensitive to student enrollment because a large share of K-12 funding is allocated through the state’s funding formula, which uses weighted-student funding to tie dollars to students. However, the state still has room for improvement.

The largest pot of dollars that aren’t portable are school district secondary property tax levies, which total nearly $1.8 billion. These are voter-approved levies for capital bonds, dollars to supplement district operations, and other purposes. Because these property tax funds are district-specific, they are not sensitive to student enrollment. Similarly, there is $186.4 million in other special property taxes that are district-specific and not tied to enrollment. From state funding sources, Arizona has $616 million in programs that aren’t allocated based on enrollment, as well as $370 million in state grants outside of its formula that are for specified school programs.

2.      Arkansas

In FY 2023, Arkansas’ non-federal K-12 budget was $5.6 billion, or $12,451 per student. Of that amount, $3.9 billion, or $8,730 per student, is portable. As a result, Arkansas’ portability score is 70.1%, ranking only behind Arizona in the states examined.

Arkansas scores high because a large share of K-12 funding is allocated through the state’s funding formula, the Matrix, which is sensitive to student enrollment. Additionally, many of the state’s largest grants outside of the formula—such as funds for low-income students, those in alternative learning environments, and English learners—are also allocated on a per-student basis and thus are portable.

Arkansas’ K-12 funding system still has a portion of dollars that aren’t portable, with the largest pot being non-formula property tax levies that total $771.0 million. These are voter-approved levies for capital bonds, dollars to supplement district operations, and other purposes. From state funding sources, Arkansas has $265.9 million in small, restricted grants for career education, special education, and other programs that also aren’t allocated based on enrollment.

3.      Georgia

In FY 2023, Georgia’s non-federal K-12 budget was $23.8 billion, or $13,652 per student. Of that amount, $10.3 billion, or $5,914 per student, is portable. As a result, Georgia’s portability score is 43.3%, a relatively low score compared to other states. This is mainly because a small share of K-12 funding is allocated through the state’s funding formula—the Quality Basic Education (QBE) formula—which is the only source of funding that is portable. Georgia also provides $545.8 million in funding to partially equalize local levies for school districts with low property wealth in per-student terms, dollars that are also sensitive to enrollment.

Most other funding sources outside the QBE, however, aren’t portable. The largest pot of non-portable dollars are school district property tax levies, which total nearly $8.4 billion when excluding property tax funds that contribute to the QBE. These are levies for capital bonds, dollars to supplement district operations, and other purposes. There is also $2.2 billion in various kinds of local sales taxes that are district-specific and not sensitive to enrollment. From state funding sources, there is $615.7 million in state grants for capital funding, pre-kindergarten, and other special programs that aren’t portable. Finally, the state also provides $387.1 million in categorical grants for transportation, nursing, sparse school districts, and other purposes that aren’t allocated based on enrollment.

4.      New Hampshire

In the 2022 fiscal year, New Hampshire’s non-federal K-12 budget was $3.3 billion, or $19,827 per student. Of that amount, $854.4 million, or $5,067 per student, is portable. As a result, New Hampshire’s portability score is 25.6%, the lowest score of all five states examined. Most of the Granite State’s portable dollars are allocated through its Equitable Education Aid (EEA) formula, which has several allocations tied to student enrollment.

The primary reason for New Hampshire’s low score is its reliance on local tax dollars that don’t contribute to the state’s EEA formula. In total, non-formula local revenue accounted for $2.3 billion or 70.2% of all K-12 dollars. Another key driver of non-portable funding is the state’s Stabilization grant, a hold harmless provision that provided $157.5 million to districts that experienced funding losses in 2012 when New Hampshire adopted changes to its funding formula. About 33% of school districts still receive Stabilization funding, the same share as when it originated in 2012.

5.       Oklahoma

In FY 2022, Oklahoma’s non-federal budget was $6.9 billion, or $9,888 per student. Of that amount, $6,402, or $4.5 billion, was portable. As a result, Oklahoma’s portability score is 64.8%, ranking third of the five states examined. The Sooner State’s relatively strong score reflects the fact that most of its K-12 dollars are allocated through funding allotments and weights in its Foundation Aid and Salary Incentive Aid formulas, which tie dollars to enrollment.

The lion’s share of non-portable dollars in Oklahoma’s funding system—about $2.4 billion—are local dollars that don’t contribute to either of the state’s funding formulas. Additionally, the state has about $211 million in intermediate revenues that also aren’t allocated based on student enrollment.

How does portability affect school choice funding?

Across these five states, there are a few drivers of non-portable dollars, including hold harmless provisions and state categorical grants. However, the primary factor harming portability is non-formula local dollars. It’s worth emphasizing that, in many states, many local K-12 dollars are portable since they contribute to the state’s funding formula. For instance, in Arizona, local funding accounts for 37.4% of state and local education funds, but less than half of this funding is non-formula. But in other states, such as New Hampshire, the bulk of local dollars are non-formula.

School choice policy designs vary, but each state’s portability score can be compared to the financial support provided to their programs. To do this, we first obtained school choice funding data for each state from EdChoice and public school funding from each respective state education agency. We then calculated the share of per-student dollars that school choice participants receive on average compared to the average per-student funding public schools receive. The results in Table 2 paint a clear picture: states with more portable K-12 funding systems tend to have a greater share of dollars following school choice participants.

The most striking comparison is between Arizona and New Hampshire. Both states tether school choice funding to their respective funding formulas: 83.2% of dollars follow the school choice participants in Arizona compared to only 25.7% in New Hampshire. This is due to the fact that Arizona’s funding system allocates most of its K-12 dollars through the state’s funding formula, while New Hampshire’s funding system relies heavily on non-formula local dollars that stay with school districts regardless of enrollment changes.

Interestingly, even in states where school choice funding isn’t tied directly to per-pupil formula amounts—Arkansas, Georgia, and Oklahoma —their portability scores still predict the share of funding that follows school choice participants. For instance, Oklahoma’s portability score of 64.8% is nearly identical to its school choice funding share of 65.7%. This is likely because school choice programs are designed to reflect the revenue lost when students leave public schools rather than trying to achieve funding parity for school choice participants. 

The takeaway is clear: when it comes to school choice, K-12 finance systems are important determinants of how much funding follows the child.  

Table 2: Comparing K-12 Funding Portability with School Choice Funding

_{Note: The ESA amount and public school funding comparisons were made using the most recent available data at the time of writing. As a result, some of the years might not match. However, this shouldn’t substantively affect the observed trends. 
*Includes ESA participants with disabilities, who receive higher scholarship amounts. The median award amount, excluding these students, is $7,409. Using this amount instead would yield a school choice share of 64.4%.
**Oklahoma funds participants based on family income. $6,500 is the median scholarship amount of the five tiers.}

Conclusion

Generally, states with weighted-student formulas that limit non-formula dollars will score highest on Reason Foundation’s funding portability metric. Low-scoring states can still implement private school choice programs, but incompatible K-12 finance systems could result in lower funding amounts for school choice participants. A large gap between per-student public school funding and choice scholarship amounts can have negative downstream effects. Choice programs with comparatively low scholarship amounts can limit students’ options since states that spend more on public education also tend to have higher tuition costs at private schools. Similarly, if policymakers in low funding-portability states want to achieve better funding parity between choice programs and public schools, they can only do so at an additional cost to taxpayers. 

At a time when school choice is fueling demand for new K-12 options, school finance reform is one way for states to incentivize a robust supply of providers. School finance reform can also help lessen the burden on taxpayers as public education enters a new era that features more choice and competition.  

The post Which K-12 finance systems foster school choice? appeared first on Reason Foundation.

On that front, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently signed an open enrollment bill letting public school students attend any public school inside their residentially assigned school district that has vacancies. This builds on the state’s 2023 LEARNS Act, which allows students to transfer to public schools in other school districts. So, students in Arkansas can now choose to attend any public school that has open seats.

Strong open enrollment laws weaken the tie between housing and schooling, making it easier for students to choose public schools that are the best fit rather than the schools they are assigned by their address. In addition to Arkansas’ new law, open enrollment proposals in Texas, New Hampshire, and Alaska have already passed one legislative chamber and could become law this year.

With 16 states now having strong public school open enrollment laws, here are three of the most important reasons other states should push this form of school choice to help tens of millions of public school students.

Open enrollment helps students go to public schools that are the right fit

Open enrollment can help students access public schools that achieve better academic outcomes than their assigned schools.

Data from Texas, Florida, Wisconsin, and Arizona show that students tend to transfer to school districts that perform better on standardized state tests, suggesting parents are looking for higher-quality public schools.

Seeking schools with better academic offerings isn’t the only reason public school students use open enrollment, however. A 2016 report from California’s Legislative Office (LAO) showed that the state’s students also use open enrollment to escape bullying.

Studies from West Virginia indicate that families use it to improve their quality of life and streamline commutes, making getting to work, school, and after-school activities easier. In Colorado, students use open enrollment to transfer to choose public schools offering smaller class sizes.

Open enrollment helps schools maintain enrollment levels

Strong open enrollment laws benefit students and school districts. Some small and rural school districts in California have used open enrollment to remain fiscally solvent by attracting new students. Timothy Walker, a school administrator at Riverside Unified School District in California, explained how open enrollment helps his district. 

“Does it make money? No. But does it keep our people employed? Yes. Does it keep our financial situation stable? Yes. Does it increase educational options? Yes,” Walker told  Education Next.

Riverside shows how open enrollment can help public schools experiencing declining local enrollments balance their budgets, retain staff, and keep their doors open by creating classes and programs that attract transfer students.

While schools and policymakers often worry that school choice may take students away from small public schools, data from Wisconsin and West Virginia showed that school districts outside of cities and suburbs benefit from open enrollment transfers. In fact, school districts in towns and rural areas attracted 50% or more of all transfer students in these states. Rural Wisconsin school districts experienced a net increase of 2,500 students due to incoming transfers from other public school districts.

Open enrollment incentivizes school districts to improve

The Legislative Analyst’s Office studies on the effectiveness of California’s District of Choice program showed that the competitive pressures that open enrollment fosters helped some of the state’s school districts improve. Some districts that initially lost students through the state’s choice program got community feedback on ways to improve and subsequently attracted and retained students. These changes included offering more college preparatory courses, such as Advanced Placement (AP) classes, and increased focus on math and science.  

A Becker-Friedman Institute study by scholars Christopher Campos and Caitlin Kearns in 2023 found that schools participating in the Los Angeles Unified School District’s within-district open enrollment program had positive effects on student achievement and college matriculation. The study found that the worst-performing schools improved the most after implementing open enrollment.

Similarly, a 2023 Reason Foundation report showed Wisconsin school districts that initially lost students through open enrollment responded and produced improved standardized test results in the years following their enrollment losses. 

Open enrollment is a win-win for students and school districts. As policymakers in states such as Missouri, Nebraska, and Georgia look to expand education options for students, they should follow the lead of Arkansas, which just passed its law, and the 16 other states, including Oklahoma and Kansas, with strong public school open enrollment laws. Letting students attend whichever public schools are the best fit for them is a straightforward way to improve public schools and student outcomes in every state.

A version of this column first appeared at RealClearEducation.

The post More states should expand school choice for public school students appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Currently, 29 states limit students’ traditional public school options to their residentially assigned public schools. Strong open enrollment laws, however, ensure that students can enroll in any public school with open seats, weakening the link between housing and schooling.

Students often use this policy to transfer schools to help them escape bullying, access specialized courses, such as Advanced Placement classes, enroll in more highly-rated school districts, be in classes with fewer students, and shorten family commutes for work and after-school activities.

In short, open enrollment helps students attend public schools that are a better fit.

Most states’ laws, however, fail to maximize students’ transfer opportunities. This analysis examines how open enrollment law design can affect public school transfer opportunities, comparing participation rates in states with strong and weak open enrollment laws. It then considers factors that might encourage higher participation rates in states with weak laws.

Open enrollment participation in states with strong open enrollment laws

Nationwide, 16 states have maximized public school students’ transfer opportunities by codifying strong open enrollment laws. These policies let students transfer to any public school so long as space is available in their grade level.

Florida’s open enrollment law enables parents to enroll their child in any public school that has not reached capacity. Reason Foundation obtained open enrollment participation data from 12 states with strong open enrollment laws, accounting for about 50% of all participants in the 19 states for which data was available. 

At first glance, it appears as though the strength of a state’s open enrollment law doesn’t make a difference in student participation. Upon closer review, however, students participated in these programs at a higher rate in states with strong open enrollment laws than in states with weak laws. On average, about 10% of students transferred in states with strong open enrollment laws, while only about 6% used open enrollment opportunities in states with weaker laws.

Figure 1 shows open enrollment participation rates in 12 states with strong open enrollment laws.

Figure 1: Open enrollment participation in states with strong open enrollment laws

Colorado and Delaware have the highest participation rates, 28% and 22%, respectively. These states have no private school choice programs, which could explain their high participation rates.

While several states, namely Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, had low participation rates compared to other states with strong open enrollment laws, this discrepancy is likely because these programs have only recently launched. For instance, less than one percent of Kansas public school students used open enrollment during the 2024-2025 school year, but it’s just the program’s first year of operation.

Based on data from other states, open enrollment participation in these states will likely increase with time. Wisconsin’s participation data showed that participation increased by about 14% annually since the program was launched, growing from about 2,500 participants during the 1998-1999 school year to nearly 61,000 students during the 2023-2024 school year.

Data from six other states—Florida, Michigan, Arizona, Minnesota, Indiana, and Ohio—also generally showed participation steadily increasing over time, illustrating a hearty appetite for public school transfers as programs become more established. These trends indicate that participation rates in states with newly launched open enrollment programs will likely increase.

Open enrollment participation in states with weak open laws

Reason Foundation collected data from seven states with weak open enrollment laws, classified as such because districts can reject transfer applicants for reasons other than insufficient capacity. These states accounted for approximately 50% of transfers in the 19 states where data was available. But on average, the participation rates across these states was just 5%.

Figure 2 shows the student transfer rates in these states.

Figure 2: Open enrollment participation in states with weak open enrollment laws

In raw numbers, students in California and Texas accounted for nearly 48% of transfers in Figure 2. But California and Texas transfers made up only 3% and 4% of their respective public school enrollment.

Similarly, in New Jersey, low participation rates are by design, as the state has artificially capped participation since 2015. As a result, less than one percent of students used the state’s open enrollment program. These examples illustrate how weak open enrollment laws can hamstring students’ public schooling options.

What’s bolstering open enrollment participation in states with weak open enrollment laws?

Not every state with weak open enrollment laws had low participation rates. One possible explanation is that some states encourage districts to accept non-resident students with financial incentives through education funding mechanisms, especially when most state funds follow students to their new school district.

For instance, 9% of students in Indiana enrolled in traditional public schools using open enrollment. Most, if not all, state education funds follow students to their new school district, which can encourage many districts to accept transfer applicants.

Similarly, Michigan’s high participation rate could be because school districts could lose 5% of their state funding if they don’t participate in open enrollment. Most school districts cannot afford this penalty and join as a result. Only 2% of school districts did not participate in Michigan’s open enrollment program during the 2018-2019 school year.

This is consistent with research from other states that shows that fiscal incentives can affect districts’ participation. For example, Wisconsin data correlated higher transfer rates and funding portability. When more state funds followed transfers to their new school district, the number of transfers also increased. This could be because the additional funds encouraged districts to accept more applicants. 

Conversely, in California and Ohio, some districts accepted fewer transfer students after the state decreased the funding that followed transfer students to their receiving school districts. These examples highlight the importance of fiscal incentives in open enrollment programs, even in states whose open enrollment laws are less than ideal.

Another possible explanation is that some states have fostered strong cultures of public school choice. For instance, Minnesota’s open enrollment participation is 12%, far exceeding states with superior laws, such as Oklahoma. Minnesota was an open enrollment trailblazer, becoming the first state to codify a policy in 1987. In the ensuing decades, participation has risen, and open enrollment is now baked into the public education system’s DNA. 

Moreover, while Minnesota’s open enrollment law falls short of Reason Foundation’s best practices, the law could still foster high participation rates because all districts must participate. This means that some students will always have the opportunity to transfer. This provision is less restrictive for students than many other states’ laws, such as Ohio’s, which give districts full discretion to opt out of open enrollment programs.

Finally, with the exception of two small tax-credit scholarship programs, charter schools and open enrollment are the only school choice programs available to Minnesota students. The private school choice programs could also increase participation rates in open enrollment as the only free education alternative.

Conclusion

The comparison between states with strong and weak open enrollment laws isn’t perfect, as the states reviewed vary in number, demographics, and density. Nonetheless, these data indicate strong open enrollment laws often correlate with higher participation rates. This illustrates the importance of crafting strong open enrollment laws that maximize students’ transfer opportunities, letting students enroll in public schools that are the right fit, regardless of where they live.

While some states still have high participation rates despite having weak open enrollment laws, this could be because school districts have fiscal incentives to accept more transfer applicants. Yet these fiscal incentives alone shouldn’t replace strong open enrollment laws. If school districts have openings, transfer students should be able to fill them. This recalibrates the relationship between students and schooling, increasing student agency in school selection.

The post Strengthening open enrollment laws is key to unlocking public school choice for kids appeared first on Reason Foundation.

K-12 open enrollment lets students transfer to public schools other than their assigned one and is an increasingly popular form of school choice. There are two types of open enrollment: cross-district open enrollment lets students transfer to schools outside their assigned district, and within-district open enrollment lets students transfer to schools other than their assigned one inside their district.

The hallmark of a strong open enrollment law is that districts must accept applicants if seats are open in their grade level.

Since 2020, nine states strengthened their open enrollment laws by applying them statewide. Currently, 16 states have strong cross-district open enrollment laws, 14 states have strong within-district open enrollment laws, 29 states have weak open enrollment laws, and four states have no open enrollment policies codified at the state level.

Yet, even in states with robust open enrollment, detailed data on these programs are scarce. Only 13 state education agencies (SEA) are required to collect data on the number of transfer students and just three states must publish comprehensive open enrollment reports by law. As a result, policymakers, taxpayers, and families are left in the dark about the number of participants, participant demographics, rejected applicants, and trends based on district characteristics.

This is important because open enrollment data show key trends and insights on how the policy affects students and school districts alike.

For students, open enrollment data can show which student groups benefit the most, those that are rejected at higher rates, and other trends among student transfers.

For school districts, these data reveal which districts are benefiting from increased student counts and, conversely, which districts lose students. This has implications for funding since school districts generally gain or lose state dollars when enrollment changes.

Most importantly, for families these data keep schools accountable, allowing the public to question when administrative actions appear to run askew of policy.

Working with the available data from 19 states, obtained via data requests or publicly available reports, this study finds five key data points about open enrollment nationwide:

1. More than 1.6 million students across 19 states used open enrollment to attend a school other than their assigned one.

Nearly 44% of these transfers occurred in three states—Florida, Texas, and Colorado—which had the most students using open enrollment. Even though most states had fewer participants, open enrollment transfers still made up a significant percentage of students enrolled in traditional public schools, approximately 8% across states on average.

Colorado and Delaware boasted the highest participation rates, with about one in four public school students using open enrollment in those states. Moreover, data from seven states showed that open enrollment participation generally increased over time.

As student mobility grows, state policymakers will need to increase education funds’ portability so they can follow students to their school regardless of where they live.

2. Forty-three percent of students using open enrollment are from low-income households.

Data from 10 states show that nearly 475,000 students using open enrollment are free and reduced price lunch eligible or from low-income families. This suggests that open enrollment can weaken the connection between housing and schooling since some students use it to enroll in schools that would otherwise be out of reach due to high housing costs.

Public schools with available capacity should be open to all students, regardless of where their families can afford to live.

3. About one in 10 open enrollment participants is also a student with disabilities. But students with disabilities are still denied transfers at high rates.

Data from 10 states show that more than 12% of students using open enrollment were also students with disabilities (SWD), accounting for nearly 121,000 transfers.

However, data from Nebraska and Wisconsin (the only states to collect this information) showed that SWD transfer applicants were rejected at higher rates than their peers.

Policymakers should take steps to ensure that SWD have equal transfer opportunities as their non-disabled peers.

4. Nearly one-third of students using open enrollment transferred to rural school districts.

Data from 18 states show that nearly 342,000 of nearly 1.2 million students used open enrollment to transfer to rural districts.

Texas’ and Indiana’s rural districts received the most transfers overall, while transfers to rural districts in South Dakota and Iowa accounted for the largest percentage of transfers across states.

In 10 states, the majority of transfers occurred in rural districts. Despite concerns that open enrollment will negatively impact rural school districts’ enrollments, policymakers should be reassured since rural districts are one of the most common recipients of transfers from other districts, showing that most districts have more to gain than lose from open enrollment laws.

5. Most states lack transparency regarding open enrollment.

Only three states collect and publish comprehensive open enrollment reports, reporting district-level data, such as the number of transfers, the number of rejected applicants, and why they were denied.

Only seven states published on their state education agency websites the number of students using open enrollment by district. More granular data, such as participation rates by race, low-income, and SWD status, were generally unavailable.

At least one state— Utah—does not collect any open enrollment data.

Without this data, families, taxpayers, and policymakers lack the tools to gauge the impact of or demand for open enrollment programs. Better transparency is crucial to public accountability, program refinement, and more accurate distribution of education funds.

Read the full Policy Study here:

The post K-12 open enrollment by the numbers: 2025 appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Guaranteeing open enrollment for students assigned to persistently dangerous schools

Federal guidance encouraged states to let students assigned to traditional public schools that have been designated as persistently dangerous transfer to safer schools. Under section 8532 of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), states must let students assigned to unsafe schools, or who are victims of a violent crime, transfer to other public schools. 

However, persistently dangerous public schools have long been underidentified because states set their own definitions of unsafe schools, which are often overly narrow. For example, an Ohio “high school of 1,000 students could have four homicides and 19 weapons possessions without being deemed persistently dangerous,” Reason magazine’s Emma Camp reported. 

Narrow definitions of unsafe, like Ohio’s, mean that many states have avoided designating public schools as unsafe even when common sense says otherwise. Unfortunately, this isn’t a recent practice. 

In 2003, California had the most K-12 students nationwide, yet the state reported no unsafe schools. Students and their families balked at this patent falsehood. “I don’t think there is safety here [Jefferson High School near downtown Los Angeles]. There are always fights,” junior Lorena Guerrero told the Los Angeles Times that year. 

Similarly, a 2019 analysis published by The74 showed that only six states–Oregon, North Dakota, Texas, Georgia, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland– identified any of their schools as unsafe. It noted that California has never identified any of its schools as unsafe.

Most recently, just five states identified 25 persistently dangerous schools during the 2023-24 school year. These low figures, however, don’t reflect reality as “public school districts reported through the Civil Rights Data Collection nearly 1.2 million violent offenses that school year,” District Administration reported. 

The Department of Education recommended that states review their definitions of persistently dangerous schools to ensure that students are afforded transfer options to safer ones, consulting state data, input from families, and the local community. 

State policymakers can expand the definition of persistently dangerous schools as they wish. They don’t have to limit themselves to homicides, gun infractions, or bullying. They could expand the definition to include failing schools and other situations that significantly hamper students’ learning environments.

Once a good definition is established, policymakers should also ensure that students assigned to persistently dangerous schools have real transfer opportunities. For instance, receiving districts could be required to accommodate these transfers regardless of their available space. 

Maximizing Title I flexibility

Earlier guidance released by the Education Department highlighted flexibility afforded to states under Title I, Part A of ESEA. During the 2021-22 school year, Title I provided $17.9 billion to states, earmarked for school districts with low-income students. However, states can reserve up to three percent of these funds to pay for Direct Student Services (Section 1003A), which can “allow parents to exercise meaningful choice in their child’s education.” 

Two permitted uses under Section 1003A could allow students to use open enrollment, which lets them attend public schools other than their residentially assigned ones, giving them access to academic courses not available in their assigned school, such as Advanced Placement (AP). This would ensure that supplemental dollars follow eligible students across district boundaries. Currently, federal dollars don’t follow transfer; reforming this, however, could create key fiscal incentives for districts to accommodate transfers. 

Similarly, students assigned to schools needing comprehensive support and improvement (CSI) could use these funds to pay for transportation costs to attend public schools not identified as CSI. Currently, 16 states have robust open enrollment laws, but most do not guarantee these students free transportation options. Only Florida and Wisconsin provide small transportation stipends to students using open enrollment. 

According to the federal guidance, Ohio is the only state to use Direct Student Services under Title I. While state education agencies can’t force school districts to use funds to pay for specific services, they could award the funds under 1103.A to districts whose priorities and goals align with the state agencies.

What this means for states 

The Trump administration cannot force states to adopt these recommendations because K-12 education, rightly, remains a state-level issue. Consequently, it’s up to state policymakers to implement the department’s guidance. One challenge in doing so, especially regarding funding, is state-level red tape. Most states layer additional regulations on top of federal ones to minimize non-compliance. Consequently, state regulations related to federal education funds are often stricter than those imposed by Congress. 

This practice unnecessarily restricts how federal funds are used at the state level. To ensure that federal funds provide students with the flexibility intended by Congress, state policymakers should identify and eliminate cumbersome regulations that stifle legal uses of federal funds. States shouldn’t let red tape stand in the way of students’ learning opportunities.

From the states

In other important education and school choice developments, as mentioned briefly above, policymakers recently codified significant public and private school choice laws in several states.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 2 into law, establishing the state’s first private school choice law. The program provides $10,000 scholarships to 100,000 students to pay for private school tuition and other approved education expenses. Participants with disabilities would receive an additional $1,500. Home-schooled students are also eligible to receive scholarships of $2,000. 

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed Senate Bill 624 and House Bill 1945. Under the new laws, students can transfer to any public school across the state. It would also require the state Department of Education to collect and publish key open enrollment data. Moreover, school districts must post their open enrollment policies and procedures on their websites and inform rejected transfer applicants why they were denied in writing. Together, these laws will launch Arkansas’ open enrollment policies from 10th place to second best nationwide in Reason Foundation’s annual rankings. 

Senate Bill 2241 was signed into law by North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong, letting charter schools operate in the state. North Dakota is the 44th state to permit charter schools. 

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed Senate Bill 62, restoring the state’s private school scholarship. Last September, the State Supreme Court struck down the program as unconstitutional because it conflicted with its Blaine Amendment, which prohibits South Carolina from funding religious schools, leaving thousands of scholarship recipients in limbo. The new law, however, transfers state funds to a trustee who then funds the accounts, avoiding the court’s concerns. Moreover, scholarships are valued at $7,500 per student, a 25% increase. During its second year of operation, eligibility will expand to 85% of students. 10,000 scholarships will be awarded during the 2025-26 school year, increasing to 15,000 scholarships the following year. The number of scholarships can increase with demand after that.

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun signed a budget that eliminates income eligibility for the state’s voucher program. This means that every K-12 student is eligible for a $6,000 scholarship to pay for private school tuition. More than 70,000 students participated in the program during the 2023-24 school year. He also signed Senate Bill 1 into law, giving charter schools access to local property tax revenues as of 2028. The funding increases will be phased in over five years. Mind Trust estimated that charter schools would receive “an additional $3,750 per charter school student,” according to Chalkbeat Indiana.

The New Hampshire House approved an expansion of the state’s Education Freedom Accounts so that up to 10,000 students could receive scholarships. Students can use these accounts to pay for approved education expenses, such as private school tuition and tutoring. During the 2024-25 school year, 5,600 students were awarded scholarships.

What to Watch

In Utah, the attorney general’s office petitioned an appeal regarding the Utah Fits All Scholarship, which was ruled unconstitutional by a district court. According to the Salt Lake City ABC affiliate, the petition argues that the constitution doesn’t “limit the legislature’s authority to create educational programs; rather it sets the minimum, which the state has already met through the traditional public school system. Additionally, a 2020 ballot referendum, approved by voters, lets the legislature use income tax to “support children.”

The U.S. House’s Ways and Means Committee approved a budget proposal that would establish a $5 billion federal tax-credit scholarship program. If codified, students whose families’ income is 300% of their area’s median income in all 50 states would be eligible to receive a $5,000 scholarship. These can pay for approved education expenses, such as private school tuition and homeschooling materials.

The Latest from Reason Foundation

–Arkansas’ K-12 open enrollment slam dunk 

–Texas open enrollment bill would significantly increase school choice

–States can expand school choice to millions of public school students

–School choice could help defuse culture war fights

–Frequently asked questions about Montana school finance reform

Recommended reading 

Plenty of Room in District Schools
Ben Scafidi at Education Next

“At least five of these districts—Wichita, Auburn-Washburn USD, Shawnee Mission, Blue Valley, and Olathe—are self-reporting capacity at levels well below their building capacity—because they served many more students a mere five years ago. For example, the Auburn-Washington district experienced a decline of 468 students after fall 2019 yet reported no capacity to serve transfer students five years later. The Andover school district self-reported more open seats (344) than indicated by the change in enrollment method, indicating that the district had open seats back in fall 2019.”

What Would Religious Charter Schools Mean for Education Choice?
Nicole Stelle Garnett and Derrell Bradford at Education Next

“Charter schools ought to fight any suggestion that they are government schools. They are, by design, freed from government control so as to enable innovation. A decision that they are government actors would undermine that goal by placing them in a constitutional straitjacket. And that decision’s ramifications would also threaten the autonomy of government-funded private organizations that provide services other than education, including health care, foster care, community development, and poverty alleviation,” Garnett wrote

The New Frontier Of School Choice: Zoning
Michael McShane at Forbes

“Some cities, for example, require private schools to get a special exception in order to open but allow public schools to open by right (that is, without all of this lengthy process). If new schools cause issues with traffic, or risk ruining the architectural character of the neighborhood, or are hazardous in one way or another, one would think that would be equally true if the school was public or private. When only one sector needs to jump through all of the hoops, it suggests that those hoops are not serving the purpose they purport to.”

The post Funding Education Opportunity: The Trump administration’s role in supporting school choice appeared first on Reason Foundation.

These upgrades make Arkansas’ K-12 open enrollment laws the second-best in the nation, which will be a massive boon to the state’s 474,000 public school students. While most states have weak open enrollment laws, Arkansas’ latest reforms establish it as a national leader. 

The most important feature of the new laws is the statewide within-district open enrollment policy, which ensures that students can transfer to public schools other than their assigned one in their school district. Data from Florida, Delaware, West Virginia, and Colorado show that within-district transfers tend to be even more common than cross-district ones by a significant margin. If Arkansas families follow suit, school districts should expect to see the number of within-district transfers increase this fall as students take advantage of openings in nearby schools.

Combined with the state’s existing cross-district transfer policy, Arkansas students can now attend any public school regardless of where they live. Strong open enrollment policies help them escape bullying, access specialized courses, such as Advanced Placement (AP) classes, shorten their commutes, have smaller class sizes, and enroll in highly rated districts. Table 1 summarizes how these improvements are scored by Reason Foundation’s open enrollment best practices.

Table 1: Score changes from improvements to Arkansas’ open enrollment law

Another key improvement is the outstanding transparency provisions adopted at the state and district levels. Under the new law, the Arkansas Department of Education will publish a comprehensive open enrollment report annually, showing the number of transfers by district, rejected applicants, and why they were denied. These data help families and taxpayers hold districts accountable for their open enrollment practices.

Arkansas’ reports will be on par with the gold-standard open enrollment reports that Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction has published for more than two decades. This makes Arkansas the fourth state to fully adopt Reason Foundation’s state-level transparency recommendations.

Arkansas also made the open enrollment process more family-friendly by strengthening district-level transparency provisions. Now, districts must post their open enrollment policies and procedures on their websites. This information will help families know when, where, and how to apply for transfers. 

Lastly, the new law requires school districts to inform rejected applicants in writing why they were denied. This ensures a level playing field if rejected applicants appeal their denial.

In 2024, Arkansas scored 79 points, a grade of C+ on Reason Foundation’s K-12 open enrollment best practices. Now, as Table 1 shows, it scores 98 out of 100 points, second only to Oklahoma and surpassing states renowned as bastions of school choice, such as Florida and Arizona. Arkansas is one of only 10 states to codify both cross- and within-district open enrollment policies in law. 

More states should follow Arkansas’s lead and establish robust open enrollment programs, adapting to the new reality in K-12 public education. Thankfully, policymakers in other states have taken note. During the 2025 legislative sessions, policymakers in 14 states, including Arkansas’ neighbors Texas and Missouri, introduced at least 24 proposals that could codify statewide open enrollment policies. 

Moreover, these policies are widely popular with families–77% of parents with school-aged children support strong open enrollment laws, according to March polling by EdChoice-Morning Consult. Most families are eager for a more competitive education marketplace where they can pick their child’s school. But more importantly, these policies will help students enroll in schools that are the right fit for them.

The post Arkansas’ K-12 open enrollment slam dunk appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Currently, in Reason Foundation’s analysis of every state’s laws, Texas has one of the weakest open enrollment laws in the nation, lagging far behind other states with strong laws, such as Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Florida.

Texas lets school districts reject transfer applicants for arbitrary reasons, even when the schools have open seats. And even when transfers are permitted, school districts can charge these students out-of-pocket tuition to transfer to public schools.

For instance, Lovejoy Independent School District, north of Dallas, charged $9,000 per transfer student during the 2023-24 school year. This limits the public schooling options for students whose families can’t afford to pay pricy tuition or live inside a school district’s boundaries. 

It’s also unnecessary, because school districts are already compensated for transfer students through the state’s funding formula. While local revenues don’t follow transfers to their new district, state dollars are more than enough to cover the cost of these students..  As evidence, Lovejoy ISD accepted transfers free of charge during the 2021-22 school year when the legislature seemed poised to limit districts’ tuitioning practices. Yet when the reform failed, Lovejoy reinstated its $9,000 tuition rate on transfers the following year. State funds are sufficient to educate transfer students, but some districts will charge tuition to rake in extra funds.

Senate Bill 686, however, would stop public schools from charging tuition to transfer students. If codified, students could transfer to any Texas public school with openings, regardless of where they live. School districts would no longer be permitted to charge transfer students tuition, ensuring that public schools are free to all students. 

The policy would give students access to more schooling opportunities. Research shows that many students use public school open enrollment to escape bullying, access specialized courses, such as Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate classes, shorten commutes, and learn in smaller class sizes. 

Reason Foundation research shows that Texas, Arizona, and Florida students typically transferred to highly rated school districts when given the opportunity. Strong open enrollment policies help students attend schools that are the right fit, regardless of where they live.

Open enrollment can also benefit school districts. Some school districts in California and Wisconsin have seen their enrollment levels increase. The funds that accompany transfers could be critical to helping many school districts stay afloat financially, especially those facing local enrollment drops due to the birth dearth.

Finally, SB 686 would codify key transparency provisions at the state and district levels to help parents know when, where, and how to apply for a transfer and ensure that this information is published online and available to parents and taxpayers.

These public school choice reforms would significantly strengthen Texas’ open enrollment policy, making it one of the best open enrollment laws in the nation. Currently, Texas scores just 36 out of 100 points and ranks 24th, tied with New Jersey, in Reason Foundation’s review of every state’s open enrollment policies. But if SB 686 is passed, Texas would improve to 94 points out of 100 on Reason Foundation’s open enrollment best practices and climb to fifth best in the nation.

The open enrollment improvements in Senate Bill 686 would help Texas seal the deal and establish itself as a true leader in public and private school choice. Most importantly, it could help millions of students in Texas find the right public schools for them, regardless of their home zip code. 

The post Texas open enrollment bill would significantly increase school choice appeared first on Reason Foundation.