Overall, these data highlight that states’ education marketplaces are competitive. While most students still attend their assigned public school, the proportion that do not is growing. On average, 15 percent of students chose publicly funded education options other than their assigned public schools in the 27 states for which data were available. Competition for students will only increase as local enrollments trend downwards due to declining birth rates.
To successfully compete in this evolving landscape, districts must proactively convince families why their local public school is the best education option to increase student capture. These aren’t wholly uncharted waters for traditional districts. From California to Minnesota to Texas, districts have shown how to compete in a more robust education marketplace through more and better specialization. Moreover, because open enrollment programs tend to scale up incrementally, sending and receiving school districts will have time to adjust course if they are proactive.
Reports from California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office from 2016 and 2021 showed that districts participating in the state’s District of Choice program that initially lost students to other districts were later able to recover them. A key part of this process was conducting outreach to local families to learn what services could better serve students and encourage their return.
Similarly, St. Paul Public Schools in Minnesota saw its first enrollment increase in a decade after designing a plan that identified schools with extra space and were most likely to attract local families. The district conducted customer service training with school employees “to improve family enrollment experience[,] giving effective school tours tailored to families’ needs, interests, and questions[, and] following up with families in a timely and meaningful way,” according to SchoolMint, a K–12 enrollment software company that partnered with the district to help streamline enrollment and recruitment.
Other districts appear to be taking note, especially in states with large open enrollment programs. With the exception of Florida, public school enrollments declined in each of the states featured in Figure 2 between the 2019–20 and 2023–24 school years, but open enrollment participation has increased in nearly all of them. Michigan can stand as a case in point. Its public schools lost more than 69,000 students—an enrollment decline of 4.6 percent— even while its open enrollment participation increased by 4 percent. The average across all states for which data was available was a 3 percent drop in public school enrollments and 6 percent rise in open enrollment participation. This means that public schools are actively competing for a shrinking student population where students are increasingly mobile.
School districts should embrace these changes. Not only is this a chance to strengthen public schools and improve student buy-in to school cultures, it also helps students attend schools that are the right fit. This could boost student retention and even attract students from charter or private schools.
Altogether, public schools still have much work to do. The overall loss of enrollment in district schools coupled with the increase in participation in open enrollment indicates that families are growing more dissatisfied with their local public schools. According to 2025 Gallup polling, almost one in four parents is dissatisfied with their eldest child’s school. The enactment of state policies that have made it easier for families to choose public schools that are a better fit for their children is a positive development for competition and school choice. But the decline in public school enrollment is indicative of a changing K–12 education landscape. An 18-year baby bust combined with more access to private and charter schools means traditional public schools must navigate an increasingly competitive education marketplace where there are fewer students. This is an opportunity for school districts to increase flexibility within their systems, improve their offerings, try to win back students they’ve lost, and become more attractive to families as a viable education choice. And states that have open enrollment policies already in place will benefit all the more from a healthy education marketplace across all sectors.
