In the “live free or die” state, switching public schools is surprisingly difficult. State law gives students only a few options. The one easy way is to enroll in a chartered public school if one happens to be nearby and a good fit. Every other option is obstructed by a series of hurdles that cannot be cleared without the approval of public school officials.
More than a dozen states offer a better way: K-12 open enrollment, which lets students attend public schools other than their residentially assigned ones.
New Hampshire lets school districts reassign students to a different district under limited circumstances. It has a separate open enrollment law, which is cumbersome, vague, and seldom used. Districts have to designate a school as an open enrollment school, yet districts that do this can prevent their own students from going to another district’s open enrollment school. Only one district, Prospect Mountain, has an open enrollment program.
To fix this, legislators have introduced three proposals–House Bill (HB) 741, Senate Bill (SB) 101, and SB 97– that would significantly improve the state’s open enrollment law by letting students attend public schools other than their residentially assigned one.
There are two types of open enrollment: cross-district open enrollment, which lets students attend schools outside their assigned school district, and within-district open enrollment, which lets students attend schools other than their assigned one that are inside their school district.
A strong open enrollment law must be statewide, meaning that school districts must admit all transfer applicants so long as extra seats are available. Currently, 16 states have strong open enrollment laws.
HB 741 and SB 101 would establish statewide cross-district open enrollment policies, letting students enroll in any public school with extra seats. Both proposals boast strong transparency provisions at the state and district levels, ensuring that policymakers, taxpayers, and families have open enrollment information at their fingertips.
If either of these proposals is codified, New Hampshire would be the 17th state to adopt statewide cross-district open enrollment.
S.B. 97 would establish a statewide within-district open enrollment law, allowing students to attend schools outside their assigned catchment area but inside their district. If codified, New Hampshire would join 14 other states, including Delaware, with this policy.
All of these proposals would significantly strengthen New Hampshire’s open enrollment law. However, the best of them–H.B. 741–would launch New Hampshire’s policy from 25th place to 5th place nationwide per Reason Foundation’s open enrollment best practices, putting the state on par with leaders in open enrollment, such as Arizona, Utah, and West Virginia.
Students use open enrollment for varying reasons. Research from Wisconsin, California, Colorado, and Minnesota cross-district open enrollment programs showed that students use it to access better academics. Notably, data from Arizona, Florida, and Texas showed that students tended to transfer to higher-rated school districts.
Additionally, Ready Colorado’s 2018 report and the California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office’s 2016 and 2021 reports found that students used the state’s cross-district open enrollment program to access specialized courses, such as Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate classes, escape bullying, or shorten their commutes.
Moreover, a 2017 study of Ohio’s cross-district open enrollment program found achievement benefits for consistent participants compared to non-participants. The most significant positive effects occurred among black students and those in high-poverty urban areas. Similarly, a 2023 study of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s within-district open enrollment program showed that it had positive effects on student achievement and college enrollment, especially when compared to non-participants
Open enrollment doesn’t just help students. It can help districts improve as well. Research from California, Ohio, and Wisconsin showed that competition between school districts can encourage them to improve.
This isn’t surprising since data from Colorado and Minnesota showed that lower-performing districts tend to lose transfers at higher rates. Moreover, small or rural districts in Wisconsin and California bolstered their enrollments with transfers. These data show that open enrollment can be a win-win for students and school districts.
As California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office wrote in its evaluation of that state’s District Choice Program, “home districts often respond to the program by taking action to gain clarity about the priorities of their communities and by implementing new educational programs. We also found that the home districts most affected by the program have made above-average gains in student achievement over the past several years, although the role of the program in these gains is difficult to determine.”
The evidence from other states strongly suggests that statewide open enrollment would achieve two long-sought goals in public education: elevate individual student outcomes and improve district public schools.
A version of this commentary was first published by The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy.