Open enrollment is a game changer, but not for everyone

Alan Borsuk:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in his education plan, unveiled recently, that if he is elected, he will push for policies that will allow low-income and special-needs students "to attend public schools outside of their school district that have the capacity to serve them."

This is part of a broader Romney plan to expand school choice, including promoting charter schools, voucher programs for private schools and virtual schools.

The idea caught my eye because we already have open enrollment, as we call it around here, on a large scale. And not much attention has been paid to its impact.

Milwaukee has gotten a lot of attention since the early 1990s for its private school voucher program, arguably the most important and far-reaching such effort in the country, at least until now. But the Milwaukee area can also been seen as an important laboratory for open enrollment.

Notes and links: Open Enrollment & Madison School District: Private/Parochial, Open Enrollment Leave, Open Enrollment Enter, Home Based Parent Surveys.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 24, 2012 5:24 AM
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