The recent proliferation of public school choice programs has made it easier than ever for dissatisfied parents to exit their assigned public school, as nearly 1.8 million students do through publicly funded school choice programs in 27 states and Washington, D.C.
Thus, about one in three public school students in these jurisdictions used K-12 open enrollment to attend public schools other than their residentially assigned one. While some states, such as Alabama, regulate which school districts can receive transfer students based on their performance on state tests, open enrollment research indicates that students generally transfer to highly rated school districts no matter what.
New data published by the Arizona and Arkansas state departments of education reinforced this finding, showing that many students in those states used open enrollment to transfer to highly rated school districts. Students tended to transfer to school districts that received high grades based on A-F scales per state accountability metrics. Altogether, almost 115,000 participants transferred to districts rated as “A” or “B”-the best ratings (See Figure 1).
Nearly 97,000 students in Arizona and almost 17,000 in Arkansas transferred to districts rated “A” or “B.” On the other hand, fewer than 2,000 students combined transferred to districts rated “D” or “F.”
Figure 1: Highly rated districts tend to attract the bulk of open enrollment transfers
Overall, the new data is consistent with findings from other states, including Texas, California, Florida, Minnesota, Colorado, and Wisconsin, where research shows students also tend to transfer to highly rated school districts.
Wisconsin, which tracks transfers in and out of each school district, shows that students tend to apply to and transfer to districts that received higher state ratings. While Wisconsin doesn’t use an A-F scale, its 100-point scale assigns districts to four categories: “significantly exceeds expectations,” “exceeds expectations,” “meets expectations,” and “meets few expectations.”
Overall, poorly rated districts tended to lose more students than highly rated districts (see Figure 2). On net, districts rated as “meets few expectations” or lower lost nearly 13,300 students, while higher-rated districts gained nearly the same amount.
Figure 2: Wisconsin open enrollment transfers by district ratings (SY 24-25)
Yet transfer rates alone don’t reveal the strong demand among Wisconsin students to exit poorly performing districts because districts don’t always have the space to accommodate all incoming transfer requests.
For example, more than 27,000 Wisconsin students requested to transfer out of school districts categorized as “meets expectations” or lower. This means that for each application received, nearly five students applied to transfer out. By contrast, only half as many students requested to transfer out of higher-rated districts. The data illustrate the demand for transfers from students seeking to leave low-performing districts.
These findings aren’t surprising. Families value schools where academics are prioritized. National polling from Oct. 2025 by CassiaK12, a firm that helps districts recruit students, showed that, after safety, the most important factors in school selection for parents were student success, curriculum, and academic programming.
March 2026 national EdChoice polling found that, after bullying and excessive anxiety, the most common reasons that parents would change schools were academic-related, such as their children’s academic needs not being met, difficulty with teachers, or insufficient individual attention.
Research by California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office in 2016 and 2021 of the state’s cross-district open enrollment program showed students used open enrollment to access college-level courses, such as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes, specialized math and science curricula, or language-immersion classes.
While most open enrollment research doesn’t track transfer students at the school-level, typically only identifying the quality of the receiving school district, it can still translate into real academic improvement for open enrollment participants. Research from Ohio showed open enrollment participants improved in math and reading, especially among Black students.
Better academic offerings and performance are key factors in students’ decisions to transfer to other public schools. Better-rated school districts attract the bulk of public school transfer students, building a competitive education marketplace. Open enrollment is a win-win for districts and students. School districts are encouraged to improve to attract and retain students, while students can select and attend schools that are the right fit.
From the states
School choice proposals advance in New Hampshire, Iowa, Tennessee, and Oklahoma, while New Hampshire’s open enrollment proposal stumbles in the lower chamber.
In New Hampshire, Senate Bill 101-FN, which would expand the state’s open enrollment policy to allow students to transfer to any public school with open seats, failed to pass the House. If it had been codified, New Hampshire would receive an A+ rather than its current F grade in Reason Foundation’s annual analysis of every state’s open enrollment laws.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed House Bill 2532 into law, which expands the state’s private school scholarship program. Under this new law, 35,000 students could receive a scholarship valued at about $7,500 per student, rather than just 15,000 as the current law allows.
Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa signed House File 2754, a school choice omnibus bill, into law. It improved state-level open enrollment reporting, requiring districts to report to the state education agency why transfer applicants were denied. This bill will slightly improve Iowa’s score to 67 out of 100 points in Reason Foundation’s next annual open enrollment rankings.
The new law also further integrated charter schools into the state’s public school system at large, adding the University Northern Iowa as a charter authorizer, ensuring that state funding for teacher salaries follows students to the charter school in which they enroll, making charter school employees eligible for the state public employee retirement system, and establishing a revolving loan fund for charter schools to help with capital costs, The Gazette reported. It also expanded learning opportunities for charter school students, allowing them to attend concurrent classes at public schools or participate in extracurricular activities not offered at their charter schools.
In Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt signed House Bill 3705, which increased the funding for the state’s tax-credit scholarship program from $250 million to $275 million. Individual scholarships are valued at $5,000 to $7,500 per student to pay for private school tuition.
What to watch
New York state opted into the federal tax-credit scholarship program, and the Wyoming State Supreme Court ended the temporary block on the state’s private school choice program.
To date, 31 states have announced intentions to participate in the federal tax-credit scholarship program. Most recently, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced her intention to opt into the program, joining Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina, and Virginia as blue or purple states opting in. Arizona and Wisconsin’s governors vetoed legislation that would have opted the states into it.
Set to launch in 2027, the new law allows individual taxpayers to contribute up to $1,700 annually to an approved scholarship-granting organization. Scholarship recipients may use these funds to cover approved education expenses, such as private school tuition, tutoring, or school uniforms. The map below shows the states that have announced decisions to participate in the program.
Figure 3: States that have announced decisions to participate in the federal tax-credit scholarship program
The Wyoming State Supreme Court unanimously overturned a Laramie County District Court Judge’s block on the state’s $50 million universal private school choice program, the Steamboat Legacy Scholarship. Contrary to the lower court’s finding, Chief Justice Lynne Boomgaarden’s opinion stated that plaintiffs (parents and the Wyoming Education Association) did not sufficiently prove that the private school scholarship program harms them because the program has not yet been implemented. Additionally, the court noted that WEA isn’t directly harmed by the program because scholarship funding comes from a different appropriation than the state’s public education fund. “There is no possible injury to Plaintiffs simply because the Legislature could have spent this money on public schools — the same could be said of any legislative appropriation that does not go toward public education,” Chief Justice Boomgaarden wrote. The case now returns to the “lower court for ‘further proceedings consistent with this opinion,’” WyoFile reported.
The latest from Reason Foundation
LAUSD Averted a Teachers Strike, But Wants a Taxpayer Bailout to Avoid Fiscal Disaster
Recommended reading
U.S. Schools Face a Crisis as the Number of Children Drops
Sarah Mervosh, Francesca Paris, and Claire Cain Miller at The New York Times
“But experts say the biggest factor in declining enrollment is the record-low U.S. fertility rate. It most recently peaked in 2007 and has fallen 24 percent since then. As children in that age cohort grow up — many babies born in 2007 graduated from high school in 2025 — there are fewer students to replace them. Projections from the National Center for Education Statistics, a research arm of the Department of Education, suggest that enrollment will keep falling in coming years.”
Five Lessons for School Reformers: 2026 Edition
Frederick Hess at Education Next
“Because states define high school math proficiency differently, the precise gaps are not perfectly comparable across states. But in many places, the disparities are shockingly large. In California, for example, 86% of high school students are graduating within four years, yet just 30% of 11th graders pass the state math test. Florida reports a 90% graduation rate while 44% of students reached only level 3 out of 5 on end-of-course exams in algebra and geometry.”
Modernizing Student Transportation for an Era of K–12 Choice
Matthew Ladner at The Heritage Foundation
“In states with declining district bus ridership and increased costs, policymakers should consider a full replacement of an antiquated district bus system. In many urban areas, most students attend schools other than their assigned district school. Districts running increasingly underused buses in attendance zones that families increasingly ignore represent a costly anachronism. Policymakers should make the existing school bus systems available to private school and homeschool students, as their parents pay the taxes that support them just like everyone else.”