Arizona is home to the most robust public school choice environment, including open enrollment and public charter schools. In 2016-17, 17 percent of Arizona’s students attended a public charter school and 83 percent attended a district school.
Yet, these statistics don’t paint the whole picture of school choice in Arizona, given open enrollment. A 2017 study of school choice in Maricopa County (see here) demonstrated that one out of two students exercised choice by not attending their assigned district school, most often opting for a different district school. Data indicated that districts in Maricopa County were in greater competition with other districts for student enrollment than they were with public charter schools. Whether these claims could be made in other counties or across Arizona would require additional research.
The Center for Student Achievement, an LLC of the Arizona Charter Schools Association, set out to understand open enrollment and public charter school choice through a state-wide study to determine whether the findings from Maricopa County were limited to Arizona’s largest county. The results of this state-wide analysis demonstrated an even more significant impact of open enrollment and district competition. Across Arizona, nearly half of all “migrating ” students (46 percent) moved from one district to another district, compared to 29 percent moving from district schools to public charter schools.
What data was used in this study?
Students who changed local education agencies (LEAs) between the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 school years before they reached the terminal grade in their district or public charter school were included in this study. The data set included grades K-12 for all public district and charter schools, including alternative schools. These data do not provide insight as to the reasons families choose to change school systems over summer.
How many students were involved in the study?
About 85,000 students who completed the 2014-2015 school year in one school system and enrolled in a different system in 2015-2016 were included in this analysis. Data were analyzed for transfers within sector: district-to-district and charter-to-charter, as well between sectors: district-to-charter, and vice versa; resulting in four distinct “migration patterns.”
Arizona public school migration patterns
In most grade levels, the majority of summer transfers changed enrollment between one district school and another district school. Nearly half of all migrating students, 46 percent, moved from one district to another, compared to 10 percent of summer transfers moving between public charter schools. Between-sector summer transfers resulted in 29 percent of students leaving districts to enroll in charters, and 15 percent of students leaving charters to enroll in districts. These data provide a clear picture that between-district open enrollment is the most significant factor impacting district enrollment, with public charter schools accounting for less than 30 percent of the overall enrollment change. In other words, in the competition for student enrollment, districts are competing more with one another than they are with public charter schools.
The number of students changing LEAs over summer is shown in the graph below by migration pattern and grade level.
Public school choice varies by grade
While the overall pattern is clear: most students move between districts, the pattern of student migration varies by grade level in Arizona. In all elementary grades, the majority of summer transfers move from one district to another, with district-to-charter migration taking a distant second place, proportionally. Grade 9 uniquely saw the single largest percentage of charter students moving to districts for high school — greater than the proportion of students moving from districts to charters.
While the reasons for this shift is not clear in the data, it is supported by the anecdotal stories of families choosing a comprehensive high school experiences often found in traditional district schools. However, once enrolled in high school, the data show that movement from districts to public charters is the dominant migration path in secondary grades. These data are accounted for by the transfer between non-alternative to alternative charter high schools (see report).
