Arkansas could be the 15th state to adopt strong within-district open enrollment

In 2023, Arkansas established a strong open enrollment law, letting K-12 students transfer to public schools in other districts. Just two years later, Arkansas policymakers could expand public schooling options for students even more. Senate Bill 205 would let public school students transfer to any school with open seats inside their residentially-assigned school district, known as within-district open enrollment. 

Currently, Arkansas’ policy only guarantees within-district transfer opportunities to students assigned to public schools with a letter grade of F based on various factors, such as achievement, growth, and graduation rates, from the Every Student Succeeds Act School Index. 

Strong open enrollment policies are bipartisanly popular with the public and, more importantly, parents of school-aged children. National polling conducted by YouGov in 2023, for example, showed that 84% of Americans supported open enrollment so students can attend public schools that are the right fit.

Open enrollment can help students find the right schools, escape bullying, access specialized courses, such as Advanced Placement (AP) classes, and streamline commutes.

Moreover, many students already use within-district open enrollment, especially in states with robust open enrollment policies. For example, nearly 451,000 students, or about one in 10 public school students, used within-district open enrollment in states such as Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, and West Virginia. 

If codified, SB 205 would establish a statewide within-district open enrollment policy, ensuring that Arkansas students could attend any public school with open seats. 

This improvement alone would boost Arkansas’ open enrollment policies to fifth best in the nation–tying with Florida. The changes increase the state’s grade from a C+ to a B+ on Reason Foundation’s open enrollment best practices scoresheet. 

Yet, state policymakers could make SB 205 even better by making the open enrollment process more transparent. Public school districts should be required to post their available capacity by grade level and open enrollment policies and procedures on their websites, making the transfer policies family-friendly and transparent.

Moreover, the Arkansas Department of Education should be required to collect key open enrollment data, such as the number of rejected transfer applicants and why they were denied, and publish it on its website. This additional transparency would place open enrollment data at the fingertips of parents, policymakers, and taxpayers, ensuring they are informed and can hold districts accountable for their open enrollment practices. 

Additionally, policymakers should ensure that school districts can’t discriminate against applicants based on their abilities. Public schools hold a blind admissions process to guarantee a fair selection process. 

In fact, if Senate Bill 205 were updated and all these provisions were adopted and signed into law, Arkansas’ open enrollment policy would become the best in the nation, surpassing Oklahoma, which currently has the best open enrollment laws on the books.

Nonetheless, even without these changes, SB 205 as-is would be a significant victory for students, who should be able to transfer to any public school with open seats.

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