A report from the nonpartisan California Legislative Analyst’s Office and a 2023 Reason Foundation study both found that the competitive effects of open enrollment also encourage public school districts to improve. In fact, when interviewed for a 2023 EdChoice report, public school district administrators in Arizona, North Carolina, Indiana, and Florida stated that open enrollment encouraged them to innovate by creating new programs and improving existing programs to better attract and retain students.
Research also shows that K–12 open enrollment is widely used and supported. Reason Foundation’s K–12 Open Enrollment by the Numbers: 2025 study found 22% of Delaware students and 28% of Colorado students in public schools used open enrollment to transfer and attend schools that were the right fit for them. Furthermore, according to a 2025 national poll by EdChoice, open enrollment is supported by 75% of school parents across party lines—80% of Republicans, 75% of Democrats, and 74% of independents—in favor of allowing families to attend public schools outside their assigned district’s boundaries. This bipartisan support led, in part, to open enrollment legislation being passed and signed into law in Idaho, Montana, and West Virginia (2023) and Nevada (2025).
Yet, as explained in this year’s edition of Public Schools Without Boundaries, Maryland is one of only four states that deprives students of any cross- or within-district open enrollment options, scoring a 0 out of Reason’s 100-point best practices criteria (an “F” letter grade). This leaves significant room for policy improvements across all seven key metrics that the study evaluates.