Oklahoma now has the best open enrollment policy in the country

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed House Bill 3386, which lets students transfer to any public school inside their school district with open seats, into law this spring. This improvement to Oklahoma’s open enrollment policy makes it the strongest nationwide and is a huge victory for families and students.

While Oklahoma already had a strong cross-district open enrollment program, letting students transfer to schools in other districts, the new law establishes a statewide within-district program, officially making every public school with availability open to all students regardless of where they live.

When public school assignments exclusively rely on the geographic location of students’ homes, catchment areas can artificially inflate housing costs. These inflated housing costs can effectively price out families who can’t afford to live in them, making the public schools public in name alone. Residential school assignment policies also exclude students in the area whose families pay the same taxes across a district just because they live on the wrong side of the tracks.

In contrast, strong within-district open enrollment laws, like Oklahoma’s new law weaken the tie between housing and schooling and help ensure that students can fill every available seat in a public school.

Students and their parents want agency in school selection, which isn’t surprising because kids do best in schools that are the right fit. Plus, students use open enrollment for many reasons, such as to access specialized classes like Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate courses, escape bullying, shorten commutes, and more.

Data from Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona, California, and Texas show that students tend to transfer to school districts with better test scores. Within-district open enrollment improved students’ outcomes in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), according to a 2023 report by the Becker-Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago. It found that the open enrollment program had “markedly” positive effects on student achievement and college enrollment compared to students who didn’t participate. 

Additionally, the program’s benefits weren’t limited to participating students. LAUSD’s within-district open enrollment policy encouraged schools that lost students to improve, especially the lowest-performing schools. 

“The evidence demonstrates that public school choice programs have the potential to improve school quality and reduce neighborhood-based disparities in educational opportunity,” the study concluded.

Competition can encourage schools to improve, ultimately helping all students. Other studies, by the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Harvard Kennedy School’s publication, Education Next, also show that competition from charter and private schools have similar effects, showing that a robust education marketplace is a tide that lifts all boats. 

Open enrollment is an increasingly popular form of public school choice. June polling by Morning Consult for EdChoice found that 80% of parents with school-aged children support the policy. Open enrollment garners support across the political spectrum, as 85% of Democrat parents, 78% of Republican parents, and 76% of parents identifying as independent support it.

Oklahoma is the first state to meet all of Reason Foundation’s open enrollment best practices, surpassing other states with impressive open enrollment policies, such as Arizona, Idaho, West Virginia, and Florida. With the law signed this spring, Oklahoma now has the best open enrollment policy in the nation.

The new law also improves transparency because the Oklahoma Department of Education (ODE) must annually publish the number of approved and rejected transfer applicants with disabilities and why their applications were rejected, helping policymakers, families and taxpayers hold public school districts accountable for allowing students to transfer to any school with open seats. 

The Office of Educational Quality and Accountability will also randomly audit 10% of school districts’ transfer denials and approvals. If the audit reveals any inaccuracies within a district’s reporting, the district is required to comply with the office’s recommendations.

Yet Oklahoma can still do better—especially when it comes to transparency. In particular, the state should ensure that its quarterly open enrollment reports remain available on its websites. Currently, the ODE only makes the most recent report available, but this means that policymakers, parents, and taxpayers are mostly in the dark about open enrollment’s impact over time. 

Instead, Oklahoma should model its open enrollment reports after Wisconsin’s data-reporting practices. The state’s annual report details trends in open enrollment, including district-level data, such as the number of transfer applications received, the number of transfers, and why rejected applicants were denied.

Nonetheless, Oklahoma’s most recent open enrollment expansion significantly strengthens its education marketplace since students are no longer trapped by their ZIP codes. It lets students attend schools that are the right fit for them.

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Source: https://reason.org/commentary/oklahoma-now-has-the-best-open-enrollment-policy-in-the-country/