Amid National Voucher Push, Missouri Once Again Turns to Open Enrollment

Yahoo

15-04-2025

Lawmakers in Missouri are debating a move that could significantly expand families' educational options. Within the K–12 politics of 2025, however, the proposal has an almost retro feel.
In March, the state House of Representatives passed a bill that would allow students to transfer to public school districts outside their community of residence, a policy known as 'open enrollment.' If it became law, districts would have the option to decline student transfers from other areas, but could not prevent their own students from leaving. Per-pupil funding from the state, totalling roughly $6,700, would follow each child to his or her new destination.
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter
It's a somewhat familiar idea. According to the nonprofit Education Commission of the States, over 40 states explicitly permit some form of interdistrict transfer, whether through voluntary agreements between communities or via statewide mandate. In Missouri itself, the House has passed statewide legislation for the last five consecutive years, only to have it stall in the state Senate.
Related
In troubled districts like St. Louis, too, it has become common for families to select among schools in nearby suburbs, mostly through a long-running desegregation effort. Advocacy groups like the No More Lines Coalition have also attempted to draw attention to parents prosecuted for falsifying their addresses to send their kids to better-performing districts.
Yet open enrollment — and the occasionally fierce debates it triggers — has also been somewhat overshadowed in recent years as calls have grown for private offerings like education savings accounts and tax-credit scholarships. With Republicans at the state and national level supporting the channeling of public funds to non-public institutions, 'school choice' has increasingly come to imply 'private school choice.'
Republican Rep. Brad Pollitt, the bill's sponsor, said his aim was to allow parents to exercise more autonomy without having to leave the traditional school system. With birth rates falling and a substantial post-COVID migration of students to homeschooling, he continued, public schools needed 'a seat at the table' during discussions of choice.
'Whatever the percentage of people that want to see a different option — maybe a better fit for their family, depending on work or other factors — I just want them to have another choice in the public school system instead of going to ESAs, a charter school, or even a virtual school,' Pollitt told The 74.
But critics of the proposal say it will introduce still more instability into school finance and governance, ultimately leading to districts battling among themselves for families who operate as free agents. Todd Fuller, the communications director of the Missouri State Teachers Association, said he worried that a 'downward spiral' of competition would benefit a few districts and gradually strip the rest of badly needed resources.
'It's not going to happen all at once,' he said. 'Over the course of time, there will be less services,' he said. 'I've seen districts already that tell their students, 'Sorry, we don't have foreign languages,' or, 'Sorry, we don't have a science class that you should take.''
Inter-district transfers are one of the oldest and most common forms of school choice across the United States. Indeed, Missouri already provides several forms of it, allowing parents to take the necessary step of switching districts if their own does not include a high school.
More controversially, students attending schools that have lost accreditation — usually for persistently low academic performance — have the option of leaving for a higher-achieving school elsewhere. That scenario was most vividly illustrated in the case of the Normandy school district, which was stripped of its accreditation by the state in 2013.
The resulting exodus was far greater than anticipated, with about 1,000 students (roughly 25 percent of all enrolled) heading for the exits that fall. Neighboring districts spent years fighting to reject their transfers, arguing that they could not provide space or meet the learning needs of so many new pupils, before ultimately yielding to court orders and a swell of negative press.
Peter Franzen is the associate director of the Children's Education Alliance of Missouri, an organization that supports parent empowerment and school choice. Having worked for decades in and around communities severely impacted by poverty and poor services, he said he believed the Normandy experience illustrated the existing appetite for open enrollment among families who are otherwise told to wait for solutions that may never come.
'If a quarter of your school drains out because nobody wants to be there, who the hell wants to put their taxes into that? I don't care how proud you are of your school — if families are leaving in droves, what could you possibly say to that?'
Related
Education leaders in the state have long had to work with troubled or under-resourced districts, most famously St. Louis and Kansas City, where only small proportions of the overwhelmingly disadvantaged student population can read or do math at grade level. Both cities feature a wide array of choice options, including charter and magnet schools, and both have seen huge drops in student enrollment over the past few decades.
Students were also able to enroll in nearby suburbs under the terms of long-lasting desegregation orders. But St. Louis's desegregation program has recently stopped accepting new students, leading some to worry that they will miss a chance to receive a better education outside the city.
But with the passage of statewide open enrollment, smaller districts could suddenly be placed in the same position as some of the largest communities in the state. Missouri is home to a large number of rural districts, including many that struggle to attract high-quality teachers. According to recent data, nearly half of all those districts are operating on a four-day school week, which has been generally shown to negatively impact student achievement.
The bill passed in the state House partly addresses the concerns of districts that fear instability in headcounts by capping the number of student departures at 3 percent of total enrollment annually. But John Benyon, superintendent of Cape Girardeau Public Schools in southeast Missouri, said that restriction could nevertheless compound into unsustainable losses over time.
'Even a gradual loss of 3 percent each year can have a compounding effect, particularly for smaller districts,' Benyon wrote in an email. 'Over time, this could lead to school closures and consolidations, which would not only disrupt students but also deeply impact the identity of small, rural Missouri communities.'
The legislation is now scheduled for a hearing in the state Senate, which has persistently declined to pass earlier versions over the last half-decade. Pollitt said his bill, which has been supported almost exclusively by Republicans each time he has offered it, aimed for a middle ground in the ongoing school choice debate.
'In the Senate, it's never been drastic enough,' he reflected. 'Those who are for total school choice think it doesn't go far enough, and those who are against any school choice think it goes too far. That's why I think it's a good bill.'
Just last year, the state GOP struck a bargain to sizably increase the size of Missouri's tax credit scholarship system, which facilitates student enrollment in private schools. They have yet to advance legislation that would allow for universal access to ESAs or other voucher-like programs, which have been rapidly adopted in a rash of Republican-led states since the pandemic.
Related
Pollitt, who is currently campaigning for a seat in the state Senate, observed that resistance in the upper chamber is largely concentrated among rural Republicans concerned about the fate of their local public schools if students begin to leave in large numbers. That same dynamic has colored intra-partisan clashes in states like Texas, where resistant legislators have been met with primary challenges for opposing the spread of ESAs.
In Missouri, he acknowledged, changes to enrollments would likely create 'winners and losers.' Still, his proposal found new momentum after being endorsed by newly elected Republican Gov. Michael Kehoe in his State of the State address.
Benyon, meanwhile, has recently traveled to Jefferson City with members of his school board to lobby against the measure. Though he said students in his district enjoyed access to a range of coveted offerings, including extracurricular opportunities and advanced coursework, he added that already-struggling communities would likely lose students if open enrollment becomes a reality. Instead of opening new avenues for flight, he concluded, the state should work with those schools to make them more attractive places to learn.
'In cases where other districts are underperforming, shouldn't we be asking why and working to fix those root issues?'