A la carte education: Could future public schools charge by the class or sport?

So much of modern life is customized exactly to the specific tastes of the consumer, and education is certainly following suit, as evidenced by the success of the school choice movement. A recently filed bill, SB 48, which allows students to play sports and participate in extracurricular programs at public schools they do not attend, seems like a reasonable embrace of this trend.

The bill, filed on Feb. 4 and now in the Senate Rules Committee, is entitled, “Access to Sports and Extracurriculars for All.” And while the media attention on the bill has largely been about how it allows home school and private school students to join public school athletic teams, it would have a much wider impact.

SB 48 would also allow public school students (including those attending charter schools) to join a sports team of another public school if their own school doesn’t offer a desired sport. So if there are two high schools in town, one which offers lacrosse and one which doesn’t, students from the other school could try out for the team.

But the bill also goes beyond sports, as the title suggests. Schools could, it appears, allow non-enrolled students (whether from an area home school, private school, charter school, or district public school) to participate in extracurricular programs too. This could open up things like theater, music, art, chess club, robotics, dance, community service, and much more.

Many public school advocates reacted with immediate outrage and mockery. But they may have missed one key element of the bill, which reads:

“The local board of education shall publish a schedule of fees, charges, and solicitations approved by the local board, including fees established to allow students not enrolled in a particular public high school to participate in sports and other extracurricular activities, on the local school administrative unit’s Web site by October 15 of each school year and, if the schedule is subsequently revised, within 30 days following the revision.”

Public schools should see this as an opportunity rather than a turf war. Home school and private school students are often portrayed as a drain of resources from public schools. But wouldn’t it be a positive development for public schools if these students suddenly became a source of major revenue?

Maybe a struggling marching band, which the district only gave a small budget, would suddenly have a bit more cash with which to buy instruments and uniforms. Maybe the art program would have more money for supplies and the theater program for better costumes.

School-choice pioneering states like Florida, Arizona, and Utah all already do this, often using Education Savings Account (ESA) money. Florida was the first, making public school extracurriculars available to home schoolers in 1996, and still maintain the dynamic almost 30 years later, as other states have begun to copy them.

Below you can see a rate card from Vail School District in Arizona. The school is able to collect large fees per offering, and the non-enrolled student is able to experience high school sports or clubs they otherwise would not have. Seems like a win-win.

As stated at the beginning, it seems like a natural outgrowth of the trend, in education and society in general, of letting people customize their lives in ways that work best for them.

“More than 80% of families surveyed by YouGov want a customizable education experience for their child, yet only 38% say they can currently achieve this,” said Craig Hulse of yes.everykid., a school choice advocacy group. “The lesson is clear: Rather than resisting ESAs, public schools should see them as a tool for innovation. By providing services families want — whether it’s advanced academic courses, specialized arts programs or extracurriculars — public schools can thrive in this new, competitive marketplace.”

One of the options my family is looking at, as our daughter will begin school next year, is a “home school enrichment center.” This is a private version of this “a la carte” customized model of school. These centers, which go to pains not to call themselves schools, offer classes, sports, and extracurricular programs to home school families as needed. Maybe one family needs American history and a chess club but have the rest handled. Other families may lean on them for about half of their educational needs, but the family still gets to customize which classes their children takes.

Could public schools be used as enrichment centers too in the future? In these other states, ESAs (the government-funded saving accounts Hulse mentioned) are a key feature of the idea. That wouldn’t be a terrible thing to consider either.

Improving low-performing schools?

One last advantage of this set up, in my view, is that it would create a strong incentive for schools to offer a good educational product. If their classes were “a la carte” to those in the surrounding area and word spread that the English class at the local elementary school wasn’t a good value, they would miss out on a lot of additional funds by not improving it. And conversely, if a particular club or class the school offers gets a good reputation, or if many do, they will see an increase in revenue. The improving classes and programs would help improve the overall education for full-time students at these poor-performing schools.

Recent NAEP scores show that, since 2013, higher-performing students and lower-performing students are on different trajectories. While higher-performing students have almost recovered from the COVID school lockdowns, lower-performing students continue to lose ground across many core subjects.

In North Carolina, the gap between the 90th percentile students and the 10th percentile students is among the fastest growing in the nation over this period, at 21.3 percentage points. Could poor-performing schools opening up their classes and programs push them to improve quality? What we know from basic economics and human natures suggests yes.

At the moment, this is just a bill, not a reality like in some other states. But it fits in well with the overall school choice vision of more options for families and more competition among schools. It’ll be interesting to see how, or if, it progresses this session.