My state has a more rational state law. For more than twenty years now, all public schools anywhere in the state offer open enrollment to all students anywhere in the state, up to the limits of the capacity of each school district to receive students. http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/Academic_Excellence/School_... Funding of course is based on enrollment. http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf More st…
Very interesting. It's clear that Missouri (where I used to live) doesn't have open enrollment. A huge amount of resources are spent on ensuring students do NOT cross district lines. As a personal example, certain ESL students in my mother's class are visited at home very often to validate that they truly do live where they say they do. When schools have to serve students that they're not getting paid for, the incent…
aik, Here's one example of a downside: Even relatively well-performing school districts can struggle when their student population starts moving to a new charter school in the area. Since many of the costs for education are fixed within a certain margin, it becomes difficult to shed costs to compensate for the lost funding for each student that left the district.