State’s biggest and quietest school choice program: open enrollment
The biggest player among Wisconsin’s school choice programs is the least controversial and gets the least attention.
We are heading into an election for state superintendent of public education in which longstanding and intense partisan differences over publicly funded vouchers for students attending private schools will be a key to who supports whom and who donates to whom.
But let’s save that for another time and focus on something that will get no attention in the campaign, wasn’t addressed in Gov. Tony Evers’ new budget proposal, and will not surface as an issue as the legislature considers the state budget – yet it shapes the school lives of more than 60,000 students each year across Wisconsin.
I’m talking about open enrollment. Open enrollment is actually the largest school choice program in Wisconsin. Since the late 1990s, it has allowed students in any district in Wisconsin to apply to go to public schools in any other district in the state. In general, students have to provide their own transportation, but otherwise the program comes with no extra costs. The receiving district gets most (but not all) of the public money that would otherwise go to the student’s home district. The receiving district can turn down a student for a few reasons, like not enough space, but it’s usually not hard for a student to get an open enrollment seat.
In fact, 65,266 students statewide open-enrolled in the 2019-20 school year, which is more students than the state’s four private school voucher programs combined. The open enrollment total for this year is not final yet – there are still students changing districts – but it will be higher than in prior years.
One big source of the increase appears to be the way the pandemic has spurred interest in virtual schools. (We’re talking about permanent virtual schools, not conventional schools that have gone virtual during the pandemic.) Open enrollment makes getting into such schools basically an easy two-step process.
Step one: Pick a virtual charter school. There are 52 of them in Wisconsin this year, up from 49 a year ago (and zero not so long ago), according to the state Department of Public Instruction.
Step two: Open-enroll in the school district that is the home base for the virtual school and sign up for the school. You live in northern Wisconsin, let’s say, and the school is in the Madison suburb of McFarland (which has a large virtual
school)? No problem because you don’t need to show up physically in McFarland. You learn from home or wherever.
Cassi Benedict, virtual charter school consultant for the DPI, said that in 201920, there were 8,696 students statewide enrolled in virtual charter schools, including some from the home district. As of a few days ago, the total for this year stood at 16,020 and it may still go up. Mike Bormett, assistant director of the parental education options team at DPI, said there has been “a dramatic increase in attendance at our virtual charter schools.”
Why? Parents don’t have to give reasons. But a list might include unhappiness with quickly-created virtual programs in local districts, health worries related to sending kids to schools that are operating in-person, and the fact that virtual schools are in themselves a good fit for some kids.
Even without including virtual school students, there are about 50,000 kids using open enrollment this year. What’s the appeal?
There are many reasons, some related to school quality, particular offerings at some schools, problems a student had at the home school, and any number of personal factors.
There is open enrollment all over the state, but there are a few clusters of higher use.
One is the Delavan-Darien school district in southern Wisconsin, where there has been a lot of upheaval. In 201920, there were 64 students who enrolled from other districts into Delavan-Darien, but there were 640 who enrolled out of the district. That’s roughly a quarter of the 2,500 public school students who live in the district, including those who open-enroll.
Another is Palmyra-Eagle, west of Milwaukee, which attracted attention a little over a year ago when there was a movement (ultimately unsuccessful) to dissolve the district. In 2019-20, there were 43 students who open-enrolled into the district and 421 who enrolled elsewhere, out of a total of just over 1,000 students who live in the district.
A third cluster involves Milwaukee children who open-enroll into either suburban schools or virtual schools. In 2019-20, there were 2,136 students who don’t live in Milwaukee but who openenrolled into MPS schools (many of them into a short list of specialty schools or schools with admission standards) and 5,417 Milwaukee kids who open-enrolled elsewhere. For years, the outflow disproportionately has involved white middle-class students. In some suburban districts in recent years, 20% or more of the overall student body has been kids from Milwaukee.
Why is open enrollment relatively uncontroversial? Presumably because it doesn’t have the private school factor that vouchers do. And, given that teachers unions lead the way in fighting vouchers, it seems worth noting that open enrollment generally involves transfers from one district with a union to another, so union opposition hasn’t been an issue. And ultimately, it’s about people picking public schools that they think offer good fits for their kids. It’s not so appealing to fight that.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a conservative advocacy organization, put out a study several weeks ago of open enrollment. It offered a summary of the program (and was one of the prods for this column). Its recommendations for change were relatively low-key – for example, the receiving districts should get more money to support each student.
Low-key is a fair term to describe the open enrollment scene. Amid all the fiery facets of school choice – vouchers! charters! religious schools! union opposition! – open enrollment seems like the kid in class who doesn’t attract attention while doing big things every day.
Alan J. Borsuk is senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at alan.borsuk @marquette.edu.