Since the pandemic, nine states have strengthened their K-12 open enrollment laws so students can attend any public school with open seats, regardless of where they live. During the 2025 legislative sessions, policymakers in 32 states have introduced approximately 80 open enrollment-related proposals, many of which would let K-12 students attend public schools other than their residentially assigned ones.
According to the Education Commission of the States (ECS), 43 states have some sort of open enrollment. However, Reason Foundation’s annual analysis of open enrollment laws finds most of these laws weak or ineffective. Only 16 states, including Oklahoma, Colorado, and Florida, have open enrollment policies that enshrine public school choice statewide.
The Missouri legislature’s recent sparring over weaker and stronger versions of K-12 open enrollment proposals encapsulates this larger debate about public education that is taking place nationwide: Should students be able to transfer to any public school with available seats?
Missouri House Bill 711 represents the status quo of most states’ voluntary open enrollment laws. If codified, school district participation in the program would be optional, and districts could also restrict the number of departing transfer students. This means that school districts could reject transfer applicants even when they have seats available and can veto decisions by parents to enroll their kids in another school district.
Proponents of voluntary open enrollment policies like Missouri HB 711 argue that statewide open enrollment laws unfairly undermine local control because school boards and superintendents wouldn’t have unilateral decision-making power over transfer requests when there are open seats.
This idea of “local control,” however, is misunderstood. It once meant local families coming together and establishing education systems that met their needs, but this is often no longer the case.
Local school boards often have off-cycle elections with very low voter turnout. They are often captured by special interests, particularly teacher unions, who try to use their clout to ensure school boards make decisions in their favor. This often makes local school boards unresponsive to the families they are supposed to be serving.
For instance, local officials in Fairfax County, Virginia, repeatedly caved to local teacher union pressures during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep schools closed, despite outrage from families. This process can prioritize school districts’ interests over students’ needs.
Post-pandemic, culture warriors, especially in red states, have also used low-turnout local school board elections to push their own priorities. While it varies by location, teacher unions have responded aggressively, checking the success of non-union-backed candidates in several elections.
Moreover, open enrollment laws restricting transfers have had their day and shown themselves wanting. Even though the ECS finds that 43 states have some sort of open enrollment law, most are weak or ineffective because the public schools in highest demand, such as high-performing affluent suburban ones, can simply choose not to participate.
According to a 2017 Fordham Institute report, non-resident students were barred from some of the “highest quality education options” in Ohio’s affluent suburbs because the public school districts refused to admit any transfer students. It also showed that most of the 111 non-participating school districts surrounded the state’s eight major cities, limiting public schooling options mostly for students assigned to urban or nearby rural districts.
Similarly, New Jersey’s Interdistrict School Choice program has artificially capped the number of participants since 2015. As a result, nearly 7,800 transfer applicants—60% of them—were denied participation in the choice program during the current 2024-25 school year.
Sadly, many of these public school districts aren’t excluding students because they lack the space to accommodate them. In 2022, two Kansas superintendents admitted in public testimony that the state’s weak open enrollment law helped keep lower-income students out of their district. They testified:
While we can certainly empathize with parents in lower-performing districts, both Blue Valley and Olathe are among the highest-performing districts in Kansas—indeed competing nationally—and, as such, would find our districts overwhelmed with requests from non-residents. Without intending to sound elitist, it is nonetheless true that housing costs in our districts often provide a check on resident student growth now.
In sum, many of these public school districts don’t want to admit students whose families can’t afford the expensive homes inside their boundaries.
Practices like these illustrate why voluntary open enrollment laws allowing school districts with space to reject transfers are insufficient for students. Intentionally or not, residentially-based school assignments create a perverse incentive structure that lets districts prioritize their own desires over students’ needs.
Strong open enrollment laws that allow students to transfer to any public school with open seats, however, aim to recalibrate the relationship between students and schools, increasing student agency in school selection. These policies, like those proposed in Missouri’s Senate Bill 215, ensure statewide open enrollment participation so that all districts make any extra seats available to transfer students. Currently, as noted above, 16 states, including Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas, have statewide open enrollment laws like those proposed by SB 215.
Unlike Missouri HB 711, SB 215 would give students and parents greater agency in their school selection and represents the future of public K-12 education and a burgeoning school choice movement. A 2025 national poll by EdChoice-Morning Consult showed that 73% of parents with school-aged children support this open enrollment approach to public school policy.
The latest data from Arizona, Florida, Delaware, West Virginia, Colorado, and Wisconsin–states with some of the best open enrollment laws nationwide–back this up. In those states, nearly 686,000 students benefited from open enrollment policies that put parents in the driver’s seat. Overall, open enrollment participants accounted for about 14% of public school enrollments in each of these states.
Students use open enrollment for various reasons, including to escape bullying, access smaller class sizes, take specialized courses, such as Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate classes, and shorten their commutes. Parents also seek out public schools that are a better fit for their kids and families for many reasons. Some families need to streamline busy careers and long commutes with their kids’ schooling and after-school activities and highly value flexible public school options.
Fortunately, families and state policymakers across the nation are increasingly recognizing the shortcomings of their weak open enrollment laws and are working to improve them. Since 2020, nine states have strengthened their open enrollment policies. This year, state policymakers in 12 states have introduced at least 25 open enrollment proposals, like Missouri’s SB 215, to establish statewide open enrollment programs.
Families and policymakers shouldn’t settle for open enrollment laws that allow public schools with open seats to reject transfer students. True local control is at the familial level–the most local unit. School districts’ interests should never trump the needs of students.
State policymakers would be wise to strengthen their open enrollment laws so students can attend any public school—anywhere in the state—that has open seats and fits students’ needs. Students’ schooling options shouldn’t be limited by where their families can afford to purchase or rent a home. Instead, students should be able to attend any public school with open seats that are a better fit for them, regardless of where they live.