Indiana Superintendent Response to Interdistrict Open Enrollment

Abstract

Market-based education reforms have been implemented in many states with the intent of using competition among schools for enrollment and funding as a means of improving school performance. Indiana has employed a public interdistrict open enrollment program to that end since the 1990s, and 2017 program estimates indicate that approximately 50,000 students linked to over 340 million in per pupil funding transferred among the state’s public school corporations. This movement parallels other forces – charter school expansion, the implementation of a state-wide voucher program, and school funding changes – that have increased enrollment and financial uncertainty for many Indiana school districts. Past studies found that other sectors that moved towards market-based systems, like healthcare and transportation, mitigated similar uncertainty by using strategic management practices to align their resources for the sake of stabilizing their position and improving their competitive standing. Similarly, this study sought to identify the actions undertaken by Indiana school corporation leaders in response to enrollment competition from other public school districts and whether or not those responses resembled the practice of strategic management found in other sectors. An electronic survey was distributed to Indiana school superintendents and associate/assistant superintendents; responses representing 47% of the state’s public school corporations were returned. Findings show that though actions varied based on the district’s setting (i.e. cities, towns, suburbs, rural areas), corporation leaders’ most favored approach to maintaining or increasing student enrollment was a reliance on communications-based strategies. Moreover, though the practice of strategic management has helped both public and private enterprises respond to changing environments resulting from market uncertainty, only one-quarter of open enrollment participants and one-fifth of the study’s total respondents reported having implemented a systematic response to market-based competition that mirrored the practice of strategic management. The greatest barrier to employing the practice was the failure to articulate an enrollment-linked goal as a strategic objective for the corporation. School district leaders looking to more effectively tend to market-based pressures for student enrollment should ensure that their enrollment goals and district resources are aligned in a context-specific manner.