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More than 40 states have established “open enrollment” policies, enabling families to enroll their children in public schools outside their designated districts. Among these, 24 states mandate that districts accept students transferring from other districts.
While the freedom for families to choose better public school options is advantageous, there are significant complications involved.
Public school districts have the authority to self-assess and report their available enrollment capacity. Thus, if a district claims it lacks space for out-of-district students, that statement is often taken at face value.
A 2013 report by the Education Commission of the States (ECS) identified the self-reporting capacity issue as a primary “barrier preventing students from benefiting from open enrollment.” According to the ECS, policies that allow districts to self-regulate their capacity
effectively hinder students from transferring to more suitable schools, even when legal provisions support their right to do so. For example, if class sizes or school capacity are not rigorously defined, local authorities could deny transfer requests by simply stating classrooms are full or the school has reached its capacity.
Research indicates that students who transfer between districts often tend to move from lower-performing to higher-performing schools, which corresponds with improvements in academic achievement, educational attainment, and other beneficial student outcomes.
Despite these positive indicators, concerns persist about inaccuracies in districts’ capacity reporting. In a recent article for Education Next, Jude Schwalbach pointed out that students with disabilities in Wisconsin (SWD) faced a significantly higher likelihood of having their transfer requests denied—almost three times more compared to their peers. Specifically, 40% of SWD transfer requests were rejected, while only 14% of requests from other students faced similar outcomes.
In addition, Schwalbach’s significant 2023 report on open enrollment for the Reason Foundation highlighted that other states also echo this trend of denial for inter-district transfers, notably among students with disabilities. This enduring issue raises an important question: How can states accurately gauge the actual capacity of public schools to accept students from neighboring districts?
A recent policy brief reveals that certain sought-after public school districts in Kansas are reporting capacities that are markedly below their actual excess building capacity. The brief notably proposes low-cost strategies that could enable a larger number of students to transfer to public schools their families consider to be better suited for their educational and social growth—regardless of district boundaries.
This methodology for assessing underreported building capacity is referred to as the “change-in-enrollment method.” Many public schools in the U.S. have experienced declines in enrollment since the fall of 2019, with projections indicating this trend may persist. To determine the capacity for transferring students at specific schools, I analyze the difference between the school’s enrollment from fall 2019 and its projected enrollment for fall 2024:
Fall 2019 enrollment – Fall 2024 enrollment = Open Enrollment Capacity
If the resulting figure is positive for a school, it indicates that the school has at least that much capacity to accommodate students transferring from other districts. This is based on the premise that the schools were capable of managing that number of students in recent years. However, this methodology may not accurately reflect situations where schools had unutilized (and unreported) capacity as of fall 2019.
Under Kansas’s 2022 open enrollment legislation, public school districts are mandated to self-report their available capacity for each school for the upcoming academic year. Moreover, districts are required to accept students whose families wish to transfer, provided the school has not exceeded its reported capacity.
Table 1 presents an analysis of the capacity for inter-district transfers in six Kansas public school districts, using the change-in-enrollment method for capacity assessment alongside each district’s self-reported figures. These districts were specifically chosen due to their attractive public schools and the interest expressed by many Kansas families willing to move their children across district lines to access these institutions.
Source
www.educationnext.org