33 States Fail on Open Enrollment. Here's How Yours Scored, and What It Means for Your District
More than 1.7 million students already cross district lines to attend a public school outside their zone. Three out of four parents say they want that option. Yet most states make it hard, expensive, or nearly impossible.
That's the picture from the Reason Foundation's new report, Public Schools Without Boundaries 2026, which grades every state's K-12 open enrollment laws. The headline: 33 states earn an F.
The scorecard: how states stack up
Reason scores each state on a 100-point scale across seven measures:
Statewide cross-district open enrollment (60 points, 30 for a partial policy)
Statewide within-district open enrollment (15 points, 5 for partial)
Free access, meaning no transfer tuition (10 points)
Schools open to all students, regardless of disability or ability (5 points)
Transparent reporting by the state education agency (4 points)
Transparent reporting by districts (4 points)
An appeals process for rejected applicants (2 points)
No state meets all seven. Oklahoma and Arkansas come closest, meeting six.
The top of the list:
Oklahoma, 99 (A+)
Arkansas, 98 (A+)
Idaho, 97 (A+)
Arizona, 95 (A)
West Virginia, 95 (A)
Utah, 91 (A-)
The B states: Florida (89), Kansas (88), Colorado (87), Delaware (87), Nebraska (85), Wisconsin (81) and South Dakota (80).
The C and D states: Montana and North Dakota (77 each), Iowa (67) and California (62).
The bottom: Alaska, Maine, Maryland and North Carolina all scored 0. Alabama and Virginia scored 5. New York scored 31.
Altogether, that's 6 states with an A, 7 with a B, 2 with a C, 2 with a D, and 33 with an F. Iowa, Nebraska, South Carolina and Vermont improved their programs in 2026, and lawmakers in 17 states considered at least 36 open enrollment bills this year.
Who's affected
Of the 49.4 million students in public schools nationwide, 39.4 million, about 80%, live in states with weak or ineffective open enrollment laws.
That gap sits against strong public demand. In a December 2025 YouGov poll, 74% of K-12 parents supported open enrollment, and 50% of all Americans said these policies would have a positive effect on the education system.
Where it is available, families use it. Across 27 states with data, more than 1.7 million students used open enrollment. Florida and Texas had the most participants. Colorado and Delaware had the highest participation rates. In Colorado, 29% of public school students use the program.
Where families go when they can choose
The report finds that transfers tend to move toward higher-rated districts:
In Arizona, 94% of cross-district transfer students enrolled in districts rated A or B.
In Arkansas, 66% did, even though only 40% of Arkansas districts carry an A or B rating (compared with 76% in Arizona).
Across those two states, roughly 115,000 students transferred into A- or B-rated districts.
In Wisconsin in 2024-25, lower-rated districts lost more than 13,000 students while higher-rated districts gained nearly the same number.
On academics, Reason reviewed five key studies of cross-district open enrollment. All found positive or neutral effects on achievement, and none found negative effects. Research on within-district transfers was more mixed: one study found negative effects tied to the timing of a transfer, especially for elementary students.
The complication: does open enrollment destabilize districts?
This is the fear most district leaders bring to the conversation, and the evidence so far doesn't support it.
A 2026 Show-Me Institute study of five states (Colorado, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wisconsin) found that cross-district open enrollment did not cause significant volatility in public school enrollment. The one exception was Wisconsin, which saw a spike in school closures in the program's first year. The authors said that effect "dissipated quickly and is not replicated in other states."
Programs also tend to grow slowly. Wisconsin's went from about 2,400 participants in 1998-99 to nearly 62,000 in 2024-25, which gave districts years, not months, to adjust staffing and budgets.
What gets in the way
Even in states with open enrollment on the books, four barriers keep showing up:
Tuition. In Ohio, transfer tuition at Orange City Schools reached nearly $26,000 in 2024-25. Across 22 Ohio districts studied, average tuition was $11,000 per student.
Fuzzy capacity rules. Of 23 states studied, nine spell out the factors districts must use to decide how many seats they have, 11 only suggest factors, and Georgia, New Hampshire and Washington give no parameters at all.
Thin transparency. Only four states' education agencies publish annual open enrollment reports. In Utah, only nine districts met all five of the report's transparency best practices.
Boundaries themselves. A 2026 Available to All report identified 14 school catchment areas in New York whose lines mirror historical housing redlining patterns.
What this looks like on the ground
Wisconsin shows how funding can make transfers workable. The state sends roughly $9,000 per regular transfer student and $14,000 per student with disabilities (2024-25). The report suggests a uniform per-pupil amount like that can cover the added cost of a transfer student without new hires or new buildings, depending on state policy.
Utah shows what transparency looks like in practice. The five best practices the report checked districts against are:
Complying with state transparency requirements
Clearly marking which schools are open or closed to transfers
Posting the application
Listing a contact for the open enrollment manager
Giving open enrollment its own web page
Colorado shows what mature participation looks like: nearly three in ten public school students use the program.
What district leaders should actually do
Whatever grade your state earned, these moves are within a district's control. They're ordered from fastest to slowest.
Build a dedicated open enrollment web page. Put the application, the deadline, and a named contact in one place. Clear, central information reduces confusion, especially for families with limited English proficiency.
Publish your capacity by school and grade. Vague or inconsistent capacity decisions invite legal and public scrutiny. Clear seat counts build trust and are easier to defend.
Set uniform deadlines and a written appeals process. Predictable timelines reduce confusion for families and workload for your office.
Track transfers in and out every year. Know which families you're gaining and losing, and from where. Since programs grow gradually, that data gives you lead time on staffing and budget decisions.
Review your attendance boundaries. Lines drawn decades ago may limit access in ways your community no longer accepts. It's better to examine them before someone else does.
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This post started as one article in The YOSS Advantage, our weekly newsletter for K-12 leaders. Each edition pulls together the most useful reads on AI, EdTech and the policy shifts that land on your desk, from enrollment and funding to staffing, so you can stay current in a few minutes instead of a few hours. It's free, and it's written for superintendents, business officials and district teams.
Source & credit
This post summarizes and builds on "Public schools without boundaries 2026: Ranking every state's K-12 open enrollment policies" by Jude Schwalbach, Senior Policy Analyst at Reason Foundation, published October 13, 2026. The state rankings, scoring criteria, participation figures, transfer data, tuition and funding numbers, and the research findings cited above all come from that report, including the YouGov, Show-Me Institute and Available to All findings it references. The recommendations for district leaders are our own. Thank you to Jude Schwalbach and Reason Foundation for this thorough, state-by-state look at open enrollment.
