Peske has a point. The nationwide average teacher salary fell by over 6 percent between 2002 and 2022, going from $75,152 to $70,548 in 2023 dollars, according to new Reason Foundation research. In total, inflation-adjusted teacher salaries fell in 40 of 50 states, as shown in Table 1.

It’s also a fact that teacher salaries are tied to educational attainment and years of experience, meaning that high-performing teachers—and those in shortage areas like math, science, and special education—aren’t paid more for their results or expertise.

To put the right incentives in place, bold teacher pay reforms are needed. But to maximize the long-term impact of these policies, it’s important to address the root causes of stagnant salaries. Examining data both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic reveals structural problems in K–12 finance that keep dollars out of teacher paychecks.

Table 1: Inflation-adjusted average teacher salary growth (2002 to 2022)

Teacher salaries before COVID-19

Nationwide, inflation-adjusted teacher pay was flat in the nearly two decades leading up to the pandemic, with the average salary falling by 0.6 percent between 2002 and 2020. While a handful of states saw big swings—salaries rose by 22 percent in Washington while falling 19 percent in Indiana—most states saw moderate changes, ranging from -5 percent to +5 percent over that period.

Remarkably, teachers’ salaries weren’t increasing at a time of unprecedented growth in public school funding, which rose by 25 percent per student as all but one state boosted K–12 spending from 2002 to 2020. Figure 1 shows the growth in K–12 revenue and teacher salaries during this period.

With education funding at record levels, why wasn’t more money going to teacher paychecks?

Figure 1: U.S. revenue per student growth vs. average teacher salary growth (2002-2020, inflation-adjusted)

A surge in non-teaching staff

One reason teacher pay didn’t grow with K–12 spending is that public schools spent heavily on hiring non-teaching staff. From 2002 to 2020, as student enrollment grew by 6.6 percent, non-teaching staff expanded by 20 percent. For every five new students, public schools added about one non-teacher. In comparison, the number of classroom teachers rose by 6.6 percent—mirroring enrollment growth, but well below growth in all other staff.

Figure 2 shows the growth of public-school staff by position type. The largest growth category was in student support, which includes social workers, psychologists, speech-language pathologists, and other positions. A nearly identical number of instructional aides—paraprofessionals who assist teachers and often work with students with disabilities—were also added to public school payrolls. Taken together, the data suggest that special education and a greater emphasis on wraparound services played large roles in the growth of non-teaching staff.

Figure 2: Public school staffing growth by position type (2002–2020)

Rising teacher pension debt

Another expense that diverted funding from teacher salaries was employee benefits, a Census Bureau category that includes pensions, Social Security, health insurance, and other costs. Between 2002 and 2020, benefit spending per student rose by 79 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars. While salary and wage spending increased by $573 per student, benefit spending increased by $1,745 per student. Research indicates that rising teacher pension costs were the primary factor behind this trend. States have failed to set aside enough money to pay for the pension benefits promised to teachers, resulting in unfunded liabilities that accumulate over time.

Pension debt can add up to big bucks: In 2024, the Teacher Retirement System of Texas had an estimated $62.6 billion in unfunded liabilities, while the California State Teachers’ Retirement System had $85.5 billion in debt. These costs are usually paid for by increasing school districts’ and teachers’ contribution rates to the pension plans. As a result, K–12 funding that might go to salaries has increasingly been directed toward pension costs, even as many states have reduced teachers’ retirement benefits.

Before the pandemic, the story was relatively straightforward: Teacher salaries stagnated despite significant increases in public school funding, primarily because funds increasingly went to hire non-teachers and cover unfunded pension liabilities. After the pandemic began, however, a different story emerged.

Teacher salaries after COVID-19

Teacher pay now plunged, falling 5.6 percent in fiscal year 2023 dollars, from $74,698 in 2020 to $70,548 in 2022. But this wasn’t because more dollars were going to new hires or benefit spending—the number of non-teachers dropped by 2 percent (before again rising sharply in 2023), and real expenditures on employee benefits inched up by $39 per student. While teacher turnover during the pandemic might have played a part, inflation during those years took a big bite out of teacher paychecks.  

After the onset of COVID-19, price growth reached levels not seen since the 1980s. “We currently face macroeconomic challenges, including unacceptable levels of inflation,” said Janet Yellen, who was Treasury secretary at the time.

The price level during the 2022 school year was nearly 10 percent higher than just two years earlier. Large pay bumps were needed to keep pace with inflation, far more than the usual 3 percent or 4 percent that districts typically dole out. Yet this didn’t happen.   

While school districts weren’t exactly strapped for cash—education funding rose by 7.4 percent between 2020 and 2022, reaching a new record of $20,097 per student in 2022—most of this $1,386 per-student increase came from federal Covid-19 relief funds. And because these dollars were temporary, many districts were hesitant to allocate them to long-term commitments such as teacher salary increases. Instead, they opted to spend the federal funding on things like building renovations, tutoring, and one-time bonuses.

Groups such as the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association lobbied hard for the stimulus funding that ultimately squeezed teachers’ purchasing power. The consensus among economists is that Covid-19 fiscal stimulus—including the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act signed by President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which sent $122 billion to public schools—helped lift inflation to historic levels. Public school lobbyists won the battle for pandemic relief funding, but that money didn’t increase teachers’ take-home pay even as inflation cut their purchasing power. 

Conclusion

Public school staffing decisions and rising pension debt led to teacher salary stagnation in the years leading up to COVID-19. While teacher take-home pay failed to keep up with inflation during the pandemic, the rise in price levels was atypical—and due in part to the stimulus spending that teachers’ unions lobbied for.

For policymakers looking to boost teachers’ salaries today, states like Texas and Arkansas offer bold ideas for targeting dollars on effective teachers and those teaching in shortage areas. But to maximize the long-term impact of such reforms, they’ll also need to pay down pension debt, examine special-education costs, and encourage school districts to prioritize teacher pay over other expenses. That teachers’ wages had stagnated over two decades of unprecedented growth in public school funding highlights deep structural problems in K–12 finance that shouldn’t be ignored.

A version of this column first appeared at The Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

The post Why teacher salaries are stagnant appeared first on Reason Foundation.

For state policymakers, it is crucial to have an accurate understanding of modern homeschoolers when considering new laws or regulations. While misconceptions about homeschooling remain prevalent, a growing body of research and data is helping to set the record straight.

The following analysis compiles key information to address two fundamental questions: Who homeschools, and why do they choose to do so? It begins by examining trends in homeschool participation, then looks at the sector’s demographics and the reasons families choose home education, and ends with a brief discussion of policy considerations.

Homeschool participation and growth

Homeschooling has increased over the past few decades, but it saw an especially steep spike at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participation estimates vary by data source, but it is clear that growth has been anything but linear.

Using figures from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, Alanna Bjorklund-Young and Angela R. Watson estimate that nearly 6 percent of students were homeschooled during the 2022–23 academic year. In comparison, the most recent estimate published by the National Center for Education Statistics’ National Household Education Survey (NHES) puts this figure at 3.4 percent in the same year.

This discrepancy is due to differences in how data are collected. The Pulse survey uses a broader definition of homeschooling than the NHES, whose estimates “can be viewed as a more restrictive definition of homeschooling, providing a more conservative estimate of this population,” write Bjorklund-Young and Watson.

However, the NHES also reports that a total of 5.2 percent of students are schooled at home—comprising homeschoolers and students enrolled full-time in virtual courses—a figure that is more in line with the Pulse survey.

Bjorklund-Young and Watson suggest looking at these data sources as a range of estimates. But to evaluate growth over time, the NHES figures should be used to ensure consistent comparisons. According to the NHES data, the proportion of homeschooling students increased from 1.7 percent of all students in 1999 to 3.4 percent in 2011–12, but dipped to 2.8 percent by 2018–19. Homeschooling then surged during the Covid-19 pandemic, with the latest NHES data showing the aforementioned 3.4 percent homeschooled in the 2022–23 school year. While the total number of homeschoolers in 2022–23—1.76 million—is up from 1.45 million in 2018–19, it is nearly identical to the 2012 figure of 1.77 million students.

Research also indicates that the homeschool population is dynamic, with many students switching school sectors at least once during their K–12 education. A survey conducted by Albert Cheng and Angela Watson found that only 17 percent of adults who were ever homeschooled did so for the entirety of their K–12 education, with 56 percent of respondents doing so for six years or fewer.

Homeschool demographics

The National Center for Education Statistics’ NHES program and the Census Bureau’s Pulse survey also provide insight into homeschooling demographics. According to the NHES, a greater share of white students (5.1 percent) were homeschooled in 2022–23 than Black students (1.7 percent) and Hispanic students (1.8 percent), as shown in Figure 1. However, compared to pre-pandemic levels, the proportion of Black homeschoolers increased by half a percentage point—rising from 1.2 percent to 1.7 percent. White participation rose even more, while Hispanic participation fell slightly.

Bjorklund-Young and Watson’s research provides additional context for these figures. Using the NHES data, they estimate that in 2022–23, about 29 percent of homeschoolers were students of color: 6 percent black, 14 percent Hispanic, 7 percent two or more races, and less than 2 percent Asian (see Figure 2). Their estimate rises to 40 percent using Pulse data, indicating that students of color are underrepresented among homeschoolers, regardless of the data source. (About 51 percent of all school-aged students fall into this category.) While students of color have seen only modest growth as a share of all homeschoolers over time—about four percentage points between 1998–99 and 2022–23—Bjorklund-Young and Watson nonetheless conclude that “the stereotypical narratives around homeschooling as a predominantly white population must be updated to represent the modern group of homeschoolers.”

Additionally, a nationally representative survey by Angela Watson and Matthew Lee included comparisons of homeschooling parents with their non-homeschooling peers on characteristics such as political affiliation, religiosity, and schooling sectors. It found that, while Republicans are overrepresented among homeschoolers—44 percent of homeschool parents identified as Republican compared to 36 percent of the general population—the majority of homeschool parents are either Democrats or independents (see Figure 3). The study also found that fewer than half of homeschoolers attend religious services weekly (including 31 percent who never attend services), and about 35 percent of homeschool households have at least one child enrolled in a public school.

The NHES data also provide valuable insight into other key demographic variables, as shown in Figure 4. (Although the National Center for Education Statistics has not yet published a complete 2022–23 dataset, I use its 2018–19 data to supplement the latest figures.)

Not surprisingly, a greater proportion of students living in areas classified as rural or towns are homeschooled than those living in areas classified as cities or suburbs. But while city and suburban students are homeschooled at lower rates, the NHES’s 2019 data indicate they still comprise about 64 percent of all homeschoolers.

Students living in lower-income households homeschool at lower rates than those living in higher-income households. According to the NHES’s 2019 data, nearly half of homeschoolers—about 49 percent—live in households earning more than $75,000.

Finally, in terms of education level, parents who have attended at least some college choose to homeschool at higher rates than parents with only a high school education. The NHES’s 2019 data show that a slight majority of homeschooler parents (52 percent) hold a bachelor’s, graduate, or professional degree, with less than one-quarter having only completed high school or less.

Reasons for homeschooling

The National Center for Education Statistics’ 2023 NHES report provides insight into why parents choose to homeschool. The survey allowed respondents to select multiple factors that were important in their decision, along with one “most important” factor. These findings, which largely mirror the final NHES survey before the Covid-19 pandemic, are summarized in Figure 5.

Notably, parents’ concerns about school environment stood out above the rest, with 83 percent of respondents identifying it as an important reason to homeschool and 28 percent ranking it as the most important one. Another factor receiving high scores in both categories was dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools, which was selected as an important reason by 72 percent of respondents and the most important reason by 17 percent. Taken together, nearly half of the respondents cited school environment or academics as the most important reason to homeschool their kids, underscoring the weight parents put on these factors.

Also notable is that moral instruction was selected by 75 percent of respondents as an important reason to homeschool, while the desire to provide religious instruction was chosen by 53 percent.

Takeaways and policy implications  

Available research and data on homeschooling provide several key takeaways for policymakers.

First, homeschoolers are a sizeable and growing share of U.S. students. Estimates vary, but we can confidently say that homeschoolers comprise between about 3.4 and 6 percent of all U.S. students, with a conservative estimate of 1.76 million total students as of 2022–23. “The U.S. homeschool population is of similar magnitude to the private and charter sectors,” conclude Watson and Lee.

As its popularity grows, homeschooling will face increasing scrutiny and regulatory pressure. It’s important for state policymakers to have an accurate view of who homeschoolers are, how they homeschool, why they choose this model, and what the research says about abuse, neglect, outcomes, and other vital issues. They should also carefully consider whether proposed homeschool regulations—ranging from notification requirements to curricular reviews—will achieve their intended purposes, and what the negative unintended consequences of additional oversight might be.

Next, data show that homeschoolers are a diverse population, putting to rest the stereotype that home education is exclusively the domain of white Christian conservatives. While white families homeschool at higher rates than Black and Hispanic families, between 29 and 40 percent of homeschoolers are students of color.

Furthermore, less than half of homeschool parents say they are Republicans, which should alert policymakers to the fact that homeschooling draws support across the political spectrum. Regardless of partisan affiliation, parents want what is best for their children, and for many, this means a home-based education.

Additionally, and perhaps surprisingly, many homeschooling families are connected to the public education system in some form. It’s rare for children to be homeschooled for their entire K–12 education, and more than one-third of homeschool households have at least one child enrolled in a public school. This underscores that, even within the same family, children have vastly different needs that can only be satisfied by a diverse supply of education providers. If maximizing each child’s unique potential is a primary goal for K–12 education, then it only makes sense to give families robust options through policy mechanisms such as education savings accounts, charter schools, and public school open enrollment. Policymakers should be sector-agnostic when it comes to cultivating K–12 education systems.

Finally, these findings offer valuable insights into where public schools are falling short and provide guidance on how they can improve. The fact that 45 percent of homeschool parents cite either concerns about school environments or dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools as the most important reason for homeschooling should raise flags for policymakers, especially at a time when lax discipline, chronic absenteeism, declining enrollment, low academic standards, and curricular controversies are making headlines from public school systems across the country.

The latest data and research clearly demonstrate that homeschoolers are diverse in many ways and that past conceptions about them should be discarded. They also provide lawmakers with an accurate understanding of modern homeschooling, its role in the education system, and insights into what public schools can learn from the reasons parents choose to homeschool. This is a critical time in K–12 education. With public schools falling short for families in a variety of measures, homeschooling is increasingly becoming an attractive alternative. Overregulating the sector in response to that preference won’t solve any of those problems, but it may add to them.

A version of this column first appeared at Education Next.

The post What state policymakers should know about homeschoolers appeared first on Reason Foundation.

“It’s no surprise that public schools are underfunded throughout the state,” claimed Anaheim Union High School District trustee Jessica Guerrero.

In reality, new Reason Foundation research shows that taxpayers are getting a poor return on their investment in California’s public schools, and the last thing those schools need is more money. Between 2002 and 2023, the state’s public school funding increased by nearly 79%, rising from $14,526 per student to $25,941 per student after adjusting for inflation.

The most recent data shows Los Angeles Unified spends $27,073 per average daily attendance, or per student, for shorthand. Santa Ana Unified spends $25,099 per student, San Bernardino Unified spends $24,881, Long Beach Unified spends $22,379, and Corona-Norco Unified spends $18,321.

California led the nation in K-12 spending growth over the past two decades, and you would expect commensurate gains in student outcomes. But results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) from 2003 to 2024 were disappointing, with declines in 8th-grade math and only modest gains in 4th-grade math and 8th-grade reading. The lone bright spot was 4th-grade reading, where the share of students scoring below basic on NAEP improved from 50.4% to 43.7%. That means that just over half of 4th graders are meeting the lowest reading threshold.

Despite record education funding, student outcomes have barely budged. While there is plenty of blame to go around, Reason Foundation’s data reveal structural problems with how K-12 dollars are spent. For starters, California’s public schools are a textbook case of mission creep. From 2002 to 2023, enrollment fell by 317,253 students while the number of non-teachers—including counselors, psychologists, social workers, administrators, and instructional aides—increased by 74,428.

There are fewer kids and more staff because public schools are increasingly focused on things like “whole child” development and content about everything from climate change to ethnic studies, which takes time away from core classes like math, English language arts, and science.

For example, California is spending $4 billion on community schools that provide both students and their families with healthcare, mental health support, legal clinics, and other services. These things aren’t bad, but it doesn’t make sense to turn public schools into social service hubs when nearly 46% of 8th-graders can’t do basic math and districts like Los Angeles Unified can’t cover their bills.

Teacher pension debt is also diverting resources from classrooms. In 2023, California’s public schools spent $4,900 per student on pension benefits, which include pension costs, health insurance, workers’ compensation, and other expenses. These costs have increased by a massive 134.9% since 2002, when schools spent $2,086 per student in real terms.

While benefit spending is up, teachers’ benefits aren’t any better. That’s because the main cause of this increase is unfunded pension liabilities. For years, lawmakers failed to set aside enough cash to cover pension promises made to teachers, and the bill has come due.

In 2024, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System reported $85 billion in debt, which is more than the state spends on K-12 education each year. Allowing this debt to accumulate means even fewer dollars will be spent on instruction in the years ahead, as money is shifted to pay for benefits promised to retirees and workers.

Finally, empty school buildings are eating up resources. Between 2020 and 2023, public enrollment dropped by 5.1%. Yet only seven of the state’s public schools closed in 2023-24—well below pre-COVID-19 school closure levels and fewer than rural states like South Dakota and Utah.

Public school closures are challenging for communities, but the alternative is worse. Underutilized schools are inefficient and costly, siphoning away dollars that could be used to boost student achievement with reading programs, tutoring, and increasing pay for high-performing teachers.

There are no easy fixes to California’s student achievement woes, and even more money won’t help. Policymakers must address structural issues with how education funding is spent, with a focus on academics, reducing pension debt, and closing underutilized schools.

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

The post Southern California school districts spend big, but student outcomes have barely budged appeared first on Reason Foundation.

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.”

___________________________________________________________________________

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.

Policymakers must have the best data possible to inform their public education decisions. The following analysis from Reason Foundation’s K-12 Education Spending Spotlight brings together the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau and National Center for Education Statistics and highlights five key insights from our tool and their implications for state policymakers and other stakeholders.

These critical insights include examining and ranking every state’s total K-12 and per student public school funding, the public school enrollment levels in every state and how states continue to hire more non-teaching staff even as they lose students, how and why teachers’ salaries are failing to keep up with inflation in nearly every state, how much public school funding is increasingly being shifted to cover pension debt, and the disappointing student scores on key standardized tests since the pandemic.

Total U.S. public school funding is approaching $1 trillion and now exceeds $25,000 per student in eight states.

Nationwide, public school funding increased by 35.8% between 2002 and 2023, rising from $14,969 per student to $20,322 per student after adjusting for inflation, Reason Foundation’s K-12 Education Spending Spotlight finds.

In total, U.S. public schools received $946.5 billion in funding in 2023, with New York topping all states at $36,976 per student, followed by New Jersey at $30,267 per student.

Notably, eight states exceeded $25,000 per student in 2023: New York, New Jersey, Vermont ($29,169 per student), Connecticut ($28,975), Pennsylvania ($26,242), California ($25,941), Rhode Island ($25,709), and Hawaii ($25,485).

The lowest-spending state, Idaho, was the only state spending less than $12,000 per student. Utah, Oklahoma and North Carolina spent less than $14,000 per student.

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% from 2020 to 2023 in Hawaii, New Mexico, Arizona, Mississippi and Alabama.

Nationally, compared to pre-pandemic levels, K-12 funding is up by 8.6%, rising by $1,610 per student in real terms between 2020 and 2023. However, the bulk of these new education dollars, since 2020—approximately $1,181 per student—are from the $190 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funding that public schools received during the pandemic. While non-federal dollars increased by $429 per student during this time, this is a departure from pre-pandemic trends, when state and local funding rose by $1,089 per student between 2017 and 2020.

Policy implications of K-12 funding levels

For policymakers, K-12 funding has increased dramatically in the past couple of decades, with public schools in all 50 states seeing substantial increases. However, with federal pandemic relief funding now expired, combined with rising economic uncertainty, declining public school enrollment, and increased competition from school choice and homeschooling, the era of unrelenting public school funding growth may be coming to an end. Public school funding is at record levels, and state and local policymakers should shift the focus to maximizing the impact of existing K-12 dollars in ways that can improve student outcomes.

Public school funding is increasingly spent on employee benefits, including teacher pensions.

Inflation-adjusted K-12 education spending on employee benefits—which includes teacher pensions, health insurance, and other expenses—increased by 81.1% between 2002 and 2023, rising from $2,221 per student to $4,022 per student, Reason Foundation’s analysis shows.

In comparison, real spending on employee salaries grew modestly, rising from $8,449 per student to $9,098 per student, a 7.7% increase. As a result, for every new $1 that public schools spent on employee salaries between 2002 and 2023, benefit expenditures rose by $3.27. In 12 states, growth of employee benefits exceeded 100%, including Hawaii (194.1%), Vermont (171.3%), Illinois (169.9%), New Jersey (167.1%), and Pennsylvania (166.4%), as shown in Table 2.

In 2023, employee benefit costs in New Jersey were $8,333 per student. In New York, the cost was $7,949 per student. Vermont and Connecticut also spent more than $7,000 on employee benefits per student they serve.

Employee benefit costs also exceeded $5,000 per student in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Massachusetts, Delaware, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Wyoming, and Alaska.

Policy implications of rising benefits costs on K-12 spending

Research shows that teacher pension debt is the primary driver of rising benefit spending. For years, states have failed to set aside enough money to cover the pension benefits promised to teachers, resulting in hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities (i.e., the difference between the total pension benefits owed to teachers and the dollars available in pension funds). Today, this means that more K-12 education funding must be used to cover pension costs, even while many states have reduced benefits for teachers, rather than in classrooms.

Policymakers should take steps to reverse this trend by paying down pension debt as fast as possible to avoid high-interest costs and modernizing antiquated assumptions and benefit designs. Otherwise, pension costs will continue to eat up a greater share of teachers’ paychecks and school districts’ budgets.

Despite plummeting enrollment, the surge in public school staffing has persisted.

Between 2002 and 2023, the number of public school staff increased by 15.1%, while student enrollment grew by only 4.1%. The bulk of new K-12 hires were non-teachers, which increased by 22.8%, such as counselors, social workers, speech pathologists, and instructional aides.

In comparison, the number of teachers rose by 7.6% during this time. Nationwide, non-teaching staff now account for over half, 52.5%, of all public school employees, up from 49.2% in 2002. Table 3 shows the growth in non-teaching staff, while Table 4 displays enrollment growth.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the public school staffing surge has persisted. Despite public school enrollment falling by 1.18 million students between 2020 and 2023, public schools added over 81,000 non-teaching staff to their payrolls during that period.

For example, California has lost 318,532 students since 2020, but has added 3,400 non-teaching staff members, while New York has lost 159,701 students but has added 6,996 non-teaching staff members.

Public school enrollment fell in 39 states from 2020 to 2023.

The 2% increases in public school enrollment in Idaho and North Dakota were the largest gains in the country. The only other states where public school enrollment grew from 2020 to 2023 were South Dakota, Delaware, Louisiana, Utah, Alabama, Montana, Texas, Florida and South Carolina.

With a 6% decrease in public school enrollment, Hawaii has experienced the largest decline in public school students since the pandemic. Enrollment also decreased by more than five percent in New York, Mississippi, Oregon, and California, and by at least four percent in New Mexico, New Hampshire, Illinois, West Virginia, Colorado, Kentucky, Washington, Rhode Island, and Michigan, according to Reason Foundation’s analysis.

Policy implications of decreased public school enrollment and current staff sizes

With the National Center for Education Statistics projecting a 5.3% decline in public school enrollment between 2024 and 2032, current staffing levels are unsustainable. School closures are on the horizon in places like Boston, Houston, Seattle, and Oakland, but it will also be important to reduce staffing to levels that match enrollment.

To minimize the need for layoffs, school districts can leverage staff resignations and retirements, while also giving greater scrutiny to costly across-the-board pay increases. Critically, public schools should also consider the return on investment from decades of adding non-teaching personnel to their payrolls and whether this aligns with their core educational mission.

The average teacher salary has declined significantly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nationwide, the average inflation-adjusted teacher salary fell from $75,152 in 2002 to $70,548 in 2022, the most recent year with complete data available, a 6.1% decline, Reason Foundation finds.

However, most of this drop in teachers’ salaries occurred in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 2002 and 2020, the average teacher salary remained virtually flat, decreasing by 0.6% to $74,698—but then from 2020 to 2022, it dropped by $4,151, or 5.6%.

From 2020 to 2022, 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%).

Only one state, Minnesota, increased teachers’ salaries after the pandemic.

As a result of the decreases following the pandemic, only 10 states experienced positive gains in average teacher salary between 2002 and 2022, with Washington (18.6%), New York (12%), and Massachusetts (11.7%) leading the list, as shown in Table 5.

In comparison, three states saw teacher salaries decline by more than 20% from 2002 to 2022: North Carolina, Michigan, and Indiana.

Policy implications of teachers’ salaries declining

For over two decades, large and regular increases in public school funding haven’t boosted teacher salaries, and this is unlikely to change without structural reforms.

First, it’s important to understand why teacher salaries stagnated between 2002 and 2020. Public school revenue grew by $3,742 per student (25%) during this period, but funding increasingly went to cover the costs of support services spending, which rose by $1,135 per student (25.4%), and employee benefits, which increased by $1,745 per student (78.6%).

Because teacher pay is tied to years of experience and educational attainment—and teacher salaries vary substantially by state—it’s also possible that demographic shifts in the teacher population contributed to the observed trends. However, available federal data make it difficult to draw firm conclusions. While the share of teachers with over 20 years of experience has declined, educational attainment has increased, with the proportion of teachers holding only a bachelor’s degree falling over time.

What drove the decline in teacher salaries between 2020 and 2022?

Teacher turnover and other factors played a role, but historic inflation levels were likely the most significant factor. In the 2022 school year, the average monthly price level was 9.6% higher than it had been just two years earlier, negating funding increases from state legislatures and eating into teacher paychecks. Large and widespread increases in nominal pay would’ve been required just for teacher salaries to keep pace with inflation, let alone increase, during these years.

For policymakers, the key takeaway is that public school spending decisions, combined with rising pension costs, are eating into teachers’ paychecks. Even if teacher demographics have shifted over time, school officials are increasingly prioritizing spending education funding on non-teaching personnel, while unfunded pension liabilities also consume a larger share of K-12 dollars.

Student outcomes were falling even before the COVID-19 pandemic, despite record funding levels.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the gold standard for measuring national and state K-12 outcomes in math, reading, and other subjects. While the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) publishes average scale scores that are precise, they also publish more intuitive proficiency levels: Basic, Proficient, and Advanced.

Importantly, the proficient benchmark is an aggressive target that doesn’t equate with grade-level proficiency or meeting state standards. According to NCES, “Students performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level on NAEP assessments demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter.” For this reason, our analysis focuses on the share of students who perform below the basic performance threshold.

Across all four subjects examined—4th and 8th-grade math and reading—the trend is clear: the share of students scoring below NAEP basic fell between 2003 and 2013, increased by 2019, and then grew sharply in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022. Except for 4th-grade math, scores regressed again from 2022 to 2024, and outcomes in all four subjects were worse in 2024 than in 2003. These figures are presented in Table 6 below.

For low-income students, a similar trend is observed, as shown in Table 7. Student performance improved from 2003 to 2013, worsened before the pandemic in 2019, and then dropped dramatically in 2022.

By 2024, low-income 8th graders fared worse than they did in 2003, while 4th-grade students still performed slightly better. Notably, performance in three of the four subjects was worse in 2024 than in 2022.

Policy implications of NAEP scores

For policymakers, a pressing concern is the widespread failure of public schools to get students back up to speed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite receiving $190 billion in federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency (ESSER) relief funding during the pandemic.

Research shows that public schools were given more than enough money to reopen safely; yet, many used the windfall to prioritize things other than academics, even as students fell behind. For instance, researchers at Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab estimate that approximately 20% of the federal pandemic relief dollars were allocated to school facilities, including building repairs and HVAC upgrades. While this was permitted under the law—and some public schools used their federal relief funds wisely—ESSER was a policy failure, especially when viewed through the lens of student achievement.

It’s also notable that, even before the pandemic, student outcomes were trending downward despite record education funding levels across states. For example, 34% of 4th graders and 27% of 8th graders scored below basic on NAEP reading in 2019. While gains were made between 2003 and 2013, a large share of students still scored below the lowest performance threshold in this peak year.

Conclusion

In the years ahead, policymakers will need to address a complex set of K-12 challenges, including declining public school enrollment, bloated staffing for current and projected enrollment levels, mounting pension costs and debt, stagnant teacher salaries, and underwhelming academic outcomes. These problems arose during a period when public schools saw historic funding increases, and money alone won’t solve them.

Instead, lawmakers will need policy solutions that address their root causes and maximize the use of existing K-12 funding. Reason Foundation’s K-12 Education Spending Spotlight aims to help them get started.

Related: K-12 Education Spending Spotlight Archives

The post K-12 Education Spending Spotlight 2025: Annual public school spending nears $1 trillion 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

The post LAUSD celebrates mediocre test scores appeared first on Reason Foundation.

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.

Research by Stanford University’s Thomas Dee shows declining birth rates, domestic migration, and more families choosing private schools and homeschooling during and after the COVID-19 pandemic school closures are all factors in declining public school enrollment. 

However, enrollment trends vary across states. Some major school districts and states saw student numbers drop even before the pandemic. To put the public school enrollment figures into perspective, it is useful to examine state-level and longitudinal data reported by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). 

Here are five key takeaways from the data and interactive tools to explore other key trends. 

1. Public school enrollment has fallen by 1.28 million students since the start of COVID-19. 

In the U.S., the COVID-19 pandemic is viewed as starting in February or March 2020. Between the 2020 and 2024 fiscal years (FY), public school enrollment fell by 1.28 million students or 2.5%. 

States such as New York, California, Mississippi, and West Virginia all lost more than 5% of their students during that period.

Only nine states saw growth in public school enrollment during that time. In fact, North Dakota is the only state with public school enrollment gains over 2% from the pre-pandemic year. 

In comparison, in the four years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, public school enrollment increased in 31 states, with sharp increases in North Dakota (6.9% enrollment growth), Idaho (6.4%), Nevada (6.3%), Utah (5.7%), and Washington (5.1%). Chart 1 shows public school enrollment trends between the 2012 and 2024 fiscal years, according to NCES data.

Chart 1: Public school enrollment trends (FY 2012 to FY 2024)

2. The short-term public school enrollment recovery after the pandemic in 2022 and 2023 appears to be over. 

In the 2022 and 2023 fiscal years, the nation’s public schools recouped some of their pandemic enrollment losses with slight increases each year over FY 2021 levels, when enrollment was at its post-pandemic low point.

However, the latest National Center for Education Statistics data signals that any hope of further year-over-year enrollment gains might be over. In the 2024 fiscal year, nationwide, public schools lost over 102,000 students compared to the number of students in 2023, with 39 states experiencing a decrease in enrollment, according to NCES data. 

The states with the largest public school enrollment declines from 2023 to 2024 included West Virginia (-1.7% enrollment decline), Arkansas (-1.7%), and Wyoming (-1.5%).

Among the 11 states that increased public school enrollment in FY 2024, the states with the largest gains included New Jersey (0.6% enrollment growth), South Carolina (0.6%), and North Dakota (0.4%). 

3. Public school enrollment was inching upward before COVID-19.  

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, public school enrollment increased by 1.3 million students, or 2.6%, from 2012 to 2020. During this time, the majority of states experienced an increase in public school enrollment, with North Dakota (19%), Utah (14.3%), and Nevada (13%) seeing the most significant increases. 

U.S. public school enrollment started to flatten somewhat in the years immediately preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, but 32 states still had an increase in public school students between 2019 and 2020. 

4. COVID-19 aggravated existing enrollment loss trends in some states while reversing growth trends in others. 

For some states, the pandemic aggravated existing declines in public school enrollment. From the 2012 to 2020 fiscal years, states like New Hampshire (-7.6% drop in enrollment), West Virginia (-6.9%), and Illinois (-6.7%) lost considerable percentages of their public school student populations.

Other states saw the pandemic stop and reverse their enrollment trends. For example, Oregon saw a 7.5% increase in public school enrollment between FY 2012 and FY 2020 but a 6.2% enrollment loss between FY 2020 and FY 2024. 

Washington experienced a similar trend, with 9.2% enrollment growth from 2012 to 2020 and a 4.2% enrollment loss during and after the pandemic. Other states like New York (-0.4%), California (-0.6%), and Massachusetts (0.6%) had relatively flat enrollment changes pre-pandemic that turned sharply downward after FY 2020. Chart 2 compares pre-pandemic and post-pandemic trends in public school enrollment, based on NCES data

Chart 2: Changes in each state’s public school enrollment from 2012 to 2024

5. Public school enrollment declines are expected to continue for years. 

The National Center for Education Statistics projects that public school enrollment will decline to 46.9 million students by the 2032 fiscal year, representing a 5.3% decrease from 2024.  

States such as Hawaii, California, Mississippi, New Mexico, and New York are forecasted to lose over 12% of their public school students during this time, with only 13 states projected to increase the number of students.  

Conclusion 

Nationwide, public school enrollment has decreased by over one million students since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This significant drop reversed the modest growth observed in the years leading up to the pandemic. Local context is essential. Not all states experienced declines after the pandemic, while some states faced enrollment decreases that had started well before the pandemic. 

As public schools become increasingly underutilized and school districts face mounting cost pressures, state and local policymakers must adjust to current enrollment and the forecasts of fewer students in the decade ahead. Public school enrollment trends will impact state and local budgets, bond elections, and teacher pension liabilities that policymakers must grapple with.

The post Examining the latest K-12 public school enrollment data and trends 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.

But despite what United Teachers Los Angeles and others might claim, LAUSD’s budget woes aren’t due to a lack of funding. According to the latest federal data, LAUSD received nearly $26,900 per student in fiscal year 2023. Taxpayers sending over $537,000 for each LAUSD classroom of 20 students is enough to provide a good education for kids.  

Instead, LAUSD’s problem is its lavish spending. Between 2012-13 and 2024-25, the district’s enrollment plummeted by 164,000 students, yet it added over 17,000 non-teachers such as instructional aides, school counselors, and social workers. The district also doled out a 21% pay raise to teachers in 2023, knowing that billions in federal COVID-19 pandemic relief dollars were set to expire the following year.   

California ranks fourth in the nation in public school spending growth since 2002, which has masked LAUSD’s financial mess. However, after two years of budget deficits and the current economic uncertainty, the state budget is projected to tighten in the coming years, and the district’s mishandling of COVID-19 reopening has accelerated its enrollment declines. 

LAUSD can do a few things to get its fiscal house in order, or it risks the same fate as school districts like Oakland and San Francisco, which are on the brink of insolvency.   

For starters, LAUSD needs to cut spending to sustainable levels. On average nationally, labor accounts for roughly 80-90% of typical public school budgets, so personnel reductions are unavoidable for LAUSD. This is never easy, but can be done in ways that minimize disruptions to classroom learning, such as trimming back on administration and non-instructional school staff. Regular attrition, such as retirements and resignations, can also be leveraged to minimize the need for pink slips.

LAUSD can also save money by reducing its facilities footprint. Research published by Available to All indicates that nearly half of the district’s elementary schools have experienced enrollment declines of 50% or worse in the past two decades, leaving an estimated 160,000 empty seats. 

Underutilized schools are costly to maintain and spread the school district’s financial resources thin, which can result in fewer elective classes and enrichment opportunities for kids. School closures are politically challenging but necessary if LAUSD is going to get on a sustainable path.  

Next, LAUSD can mitigate enrollment losses by giving families more options. States and school districts across the country are moving away from residential assignment, where students are zoned to schools and have limited or no options. Public school open enrollment gives students access to seats in schools regardless of where they live, putting parents in the driver’s seat and creating a competitive environment where public schools are incentivized to innovate, improve and attract students.

A study on LAUSD’s Zones of Choice program—a limited form of open enrollment—suggests that embracing an expansive policy would pay dividends for the school district. In their working paper on the impact of the Zones of Choice program, the University of Chicago’s Christopher Campos and the University of California-Berkeley’s Caitlin Kearns found significant gains in student achievement and college enrollment, which they attribute to increased competition. 

“The evidence demonstrates that public school choice programs have the potential to improve school quality and reduce neighborhood-based disparities in educational opportunity,” the researchers conclude.

Next, LAUSD can mitigate enrollment losses by giving families more options. States and school districts across the country are moving away from residential assignment, where students are zoned to schools and have limited or no options. Public school open enrollment gives students access to seats in schools regardless of where they live, putting parents in the driver’s seat and creating a competitive environment where public schools are incentivized to innovate, improve, and attract students.

A study on LAUSD’s Zones of Choice program—a limited form of open enrollment—suggests that embracing an expansive policy would pay dividends for the school district. In their working paper on the impact of the Zones of Choice program, the University of Chicago’s Christopher Campos and the University of California-Berkeley’s Caitlin Kearns found significant gains in student achievement and college enrollment, which they attribute to increased competition. 

“The evidence demonstrates that public school choice programs have the potential to improve school quality and reduce neighborhood-based disparities in educational opportunity,” the researchers conclude.

The solutions to LAUSD’s fiscal woes are straightforward—spend less, give parents choices, and focus on academics. The challenge will be overcoming objections from United Teachers of Los Angeles and other groups that oppose anything that disrupts the failing status quo. However, adopting these reforms would be a win-win for the district and students and would be worth the political fight.

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

The post How LAUSD can deal with budget deficit, declining enrollment 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.