• Starting with a 1647 law, America has an almost 400-year tradition of schools being supported by local property tax, connecting where a student lives with their education.
• The country’s history of segregation and redlining has impacted where many families today live and educate their kids.
• Open enrollment helps families overcome the harmful effects of these traditions and the momentum they created, giving parents the chance to choose a public school that fits their child.

​When parents of school-age kids contemplate buying a home, they commonly ask, “How good are the schools there?”

Why? Because there is a strong presumption that the neighborhood where a family lives determines the school that their children will attend.

Today, many states have policies that soften that reality, but how did that presumption come to be?

A short history lesson provides some context.

Early education policy and property tax

Before the United States was founded, the colonies’ approach to education set traditions that would continue through the early days of the country to today.

The Massachusetts Act of 1647, sometimes known as the “Old Deluder Satan Act” for its intent to thwart Satan’s threat against the uneducated, established that towns of various sizes had to provide teachers and schools. It also provided that towns could pay for these by parents of the children or by the town’s “inhabitants in general” – or in other words, local taxes. The concept in this law spread to other regions, and it put in motion what would eventually become an almost 400-year tradition of schools being supported by local property tax.

Today, public education is funded through state and federal sources in addition to local sources. Several states have tried to reduce or eliminate property taxes as a source of revenue for education, but they continue to be an important part of funding public education across the nation.

In Utah, state funds make up a much higher percentage of school districts’ General Fund revenue (63.99%) than local funds (24.15%) – or federal funds for that matter (11.86%). However, local funds, of which property taxes are the main source in Utah, remain a bedrock in funding public schools in the state as well.

Segregation and redlining

Furthermore, the country’s history of segregation and redlining has impacted where many families today live and educate their kids.

In the early 1900s, the federal government conditioned home loans on the wealth of neighborhoods, often taking race into account. This was accomplished in part by “redlining,” a practice of identifying areas where loans should be denied because they were seen as financially risky. “Redlining” got its name because in the 1930s, the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation – which the federal government used to manage its loans – created maps that identified these areas with the color red.

 As a result, families in redlined areas were often limited in financial growth and had to live in areas that often had worse schools.  Redlining was widespread, and it happened in Utah too. According to Utah scholars, this ultimately created the economic divide seen today between the east side and west side of Salt Lake City.

Even though Congress passed laws decades later to correct such practices, today across the nation many of the redlining boundaries reflect some of the school districts’ attendance zones – the district policy mechanism that says, “If you have this ZIP code, you are assigned to that school.”

As a result, some children today are still geographically assigned to schools that aren’t meeting their needs – based on policies created almost 100 years ago that trapped poor families in poor areas.

By the 1970s, much of the racial discrimination and segregation had been legally prohibited, but de facto segregation and discrimination based on geography (sometimes called address discrimination) can still keep families in schools that don’t serve them well.

Open enrollment policies emerge in the 1980s

Such traditions and practices created a powerful momentum, making it difficult to untangle a person’s neighborhood from their school option.

By the 1980s, states were considering policies known today as open enrollment – allowing students to enroll in a public school other than the one to which they were geographically assigned, as a way to give families choices among public schools. Open enrollment policies can look different but are essentially intended to make transferring students from one school or district to another school or district easier, less burdensome and attainable, especially for students who need options most.

Such policies relieve the burden on families to live in a certain area – or afford to live in a certain area – in order to attend a school that works best for their child. It breaks any lingering momentum for saying a child’s geographical location will determine their education.

In 1988, Minnesota became the first state to pass an open enrollment law that required schools and districts to allow students to transfer to other districts.

Utah was not far behind, in 1990. It has what is considered to be a strong open enrollment law.

No Child Left Behind, passed in 2001, included an open enrollment provision requiring that students in schools that didn’t meet Adequate Yearly Progress for two consecutive years be allowed to enroll in other, higher-performing schools in that school’s district. This requirement ran into practical challenges but promoted the idea of getting kids into better schools through an open enrollment framework.

Although open enrollment has spread throughout many states, and although Utah is seen as a leader, there are still areas for improvement across the nation and in Utah.

Possible reforms

Utah’s open enrollment policy landscape has weak spots in its state-level public transparency (for instance, the Utah State Board of Education is not required to share open enrollment data), even weaker district compliance with transparency required by current law (many districts don’t share the open enrollment data they are required to by law), and gaps that could lead to inappropriate reasons for denying transfer students (no prohibition against denying students based on their address when seeking to transfer).

Luckily, for Utah families that are concerned about getting their children a better education than the one offered at the schools where they are geographically assigned, there are more options than ever. There are charter schools, online education, and scholarships for private options. However, with the vast majority of parents enrolling their children in public district schools, open enrollment deserves to be part of that menu of options and warrants legislative attention as well. In fact, with public school enrollment on the decline, strong open enrollment policies may be a bulwark against any existential threat to public schooling as a whole.