Few clear-cut fixes exist in education. When it comes to school enrollment, however, a specific centralized process exists that is both simple for families to navigate and efficient for schools and districts.
Traditionally, school districts have assigned families to their neighborhood school by default. Yet over the past two decades, access to a variety of public school options has increased dramatically, especially in large urban areas. According to a 2017 analysis by the Brookings Institution, the proportion of large school districts that offered school choice doubled from 2000 through 2016. As a result, of the more than 50.1 million students nationwide who attended public schools over the 2015-16 school year, more than 2.8 million students attended public charter schools, and more than 2.6 million students attended magnet schools. Additional students attended other types of public schools of choice, such as those with specialty or thematic programs...