Despite the growing number of families choosing private schooling options for their children, 83 percent of K-12 students remain enrolled in traditional public schools, and this trend is unlikely to change significantly in the short term. Strong open enrollment policies, which let kids attend any public school with open seats, can provide families who still depend on the public school system with better choices. Now, data show that policymakers are increasingly understanding the importance of having good K-12 open enrollment policies.
Since 2020, 17 states have strengthened these policies to let students transfer to public schools other than their assigned ones. For example, lawmakers in seven states, including Arkansas and Kansas, improved their cross-district open enrollment laws, ensuring that students can transfer to public schools in other school districts whenever seats become available. As of 2025, 16 states operate robust cross-district open enrollment programs.
Similarly, seven states strengthened their within-district open enrollment laws, allowing students to transfer to public schools inside their assigned district. Just this year, Arkansas, New Hampshire and Nevada codified strong within-district policies, increasing the total number of states with these policies to 17.
Moreover, many policymakers don’t want to just expand students’ schooling options; they want to make the transfer process family-friendly. This is why the open enrollment laws in nine states were updated to ensure that the transfer process is uniform and easy to navigate, so families know when, where and how to apply for transfers. For example, Idaho’s law, passed in 2023, ensures that all districts post their open enrollment policies, procedures, and available capacity by grade level on their websites.
Some policymakers also wanted to ensure that any student could transfer, regardless of family income. This is why four states passed laws that allowed student transfers at no out-of-pocket cost to families. Currently, only 27 states guarantee that public schools are free to transfer students. As an example of what happens without such laws, New York’s Pelham Union Free School District charged nearly $21,000 in tuition per non-resident student and more than $91,000 in tuition per non-resident student with disabilities during the 2024-25 school year.
Altogether, these reforms weakened the barriers that had stopped students from transferring to public schools other than their assigned ones. While most reforms have occurred in red states, that could be changing.
Nevada’s recent success in strengthening its open enrollment policy could be a harbinger of reform in other purple or blue states. Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) and Assembly Member Selena Torres-Fossett (D) collaborated to pass a strong within-district open enrollment policy, bolstered by robust transparency provisions. Torres-Fosset calls open enrollment “an opportunity for the parents to have a little bit more say in where their kid is going to school.”
In fact, some left-leaning organizations, such as Democrats for Education Reform and the Progressive Policy Institute, argue that Democrats should be stronger supporters of open enrollment. “We’ve lost our advantage on education because I think that we’ve failed to fully acknowledge that choice resonates deeply with families and with voters,” Jorge Elorza, CEO of Democrats for Education Reform, explained to Politico in 2023.
Elorza is right — when it comes to school choice, the genie is out of the bottle. Previously, many policymakers and district administrators could oppose public and private school choice policies, arguing that they could undermine public schools because fewer enrollments meant fewer education dollars for public schools overall.
Yet, after extended school closures and poorly implemented remote learning during the pandemic, parents and students have no patience for claims that the price of public schools’ success must come at the cost of individual students’ success.
Accordingly, savvy operators should recognize that creating flexible transfer options within the public school system through open enrollment could be a school choice reform that appeals to families and the broader population in states that are purple or lean blue. Open enrollment already has a history of success in these states, as past examples from Colorado and Wisconsin illustrate.
Open enrollment’s legislative successes, combined with its expanding coalition, reflect a notable shift in the way most Americans think about K-12 education. In this new and increasingly competitive education landscape, traditional public schools no longer have a wholesale monopoly over geographic regions. This new system prioritizes student agency in school selection, giving them the freedom to choose schools that are the right fit.
Policymakers would be wise to take note of successful open enrollment reforms when considering the best path forward for students in their state.
Jude Schwalbach is a senior policy analyst at Reason Foundation and the author of “Public Schools Without Boundaries 2025,” a report ranking every state’s open enrollment laws.
