In the last five years, a majority of states have taken steps to expand parent access to district, charter, magnet, private, online or home education. The momentum has been particularly strong in the Southeast. Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia have made some of the biggest changes in the country. The positive peer pressure puts state leaders in the hot seat, and state policies under the microscope.
Georgia belongs on the list of states that have done real work to increase school choice in that five-year period like supporting public charter schools with more funding for their facilities, smoothing the way for new charters to be authorized, and creating the Georgia Promise Scholarship, the state’s first education savings account program.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
If you want to choose a school in your public school district other than the one to which you are residentially assigned, you have a clear pathway to apply, and you cannot be charged for any difference in tuition between the two schools.
Then there is the emerging momentum of the microschool movement, which reflects many parents’ prioritization of cultural fit, community-building and family flexibility in their child’s education. Some of the most dynamic microschools in the country are located in Atlanta, as exhibited by the collective Black Microschools ATL.
However, there are two areas in which Georgia is behind the curve: interdistrict open enrollment and private school choice program eligibility.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
Although parents have opportunities to enroll in a variety of public schools within their school district, restrictions on interdistrict open enrollment put a heavy burden on families who have to relocate abruptly or lose their housing. There is also a lack of information for parents who are considering this path; parents are on their own to hunt, peck and call around to find out what may be available.
Last fall, the story of one Atlanta mom struggling with these policies illustrated how costly these policies could be for families and for children’s futures. That particular family found themselves moving out of necessity to a different school district after an eviction and desperately trying to stay in their previous schools. At first, they were entitled to keep their seats in their schools thanks to federal policies that temporarily protect homeless or evicted students’ access to their prior schools. However, once that clock ran out, they found Georgia’s policies around open enrollment to be far less understanding.
To improve interdistrict open enrollment, Georgia could follow the lead of states like Kansas and Nevada that require districts to publicly share information about the number of available seats by grade and by school. Arkansas and Montana have recently taken steps to remove school districts’ veto power over transfer applications, which in some cases let a student’s assigned district keep them enrolled even if they’ve been granted a seat elsewhere.
Then there is Georgia’s new Promise Scholarship, which is saddled with particularly complicated eligibility criteria. Students are eligible for this education savings account if they are zoned to attend the worst-performing public schools in the state and fall under 400% of the federal poverty line, with one additional crucial criterion (for students not entering kindergarten) — they must also have attended a Georgia public school for the prior academic year.
If a parent scraped, saved or borrowed enough money for another type of education, they cannot benefit from the program. In the prior story, for instance, the mom struggling to stay in public school took a chance at homeschooling for a short period of time out of desperation. Should her son no longer be eligible for a Georgia Promise Scholarship? Removing the prior public school attendance requirement is the natural answer to improving Promise Scholarship access.
Three-quarters of U.S. parents of school-aged children surveyed this winter said that they had considered a new school for a child in their household in the last 12 months. Sixty-two percent say they are likely to search for a new school in 2026. With the policies currently on the books, Georgia is preventing families from choosing some of the public schools in the state that they prefer. The state is also telling parents who chose private schooling, or homeschooling, that their proactivity disqualifies them from a program designed with families like theirs in mind.
The question for the leaders of Georgia is as follows: When parents go looking for school choice options, is that what you want them to find?
Andrew Campanella is CEO of the National School Choice Awareness Foundation and Shelby Doyle serves as senior vice president.
If you have any thoughts about this item, or if you’re interested in writing an op-ed for the AJC’s education page, drop us a note at education@ajc.com.
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