Ben DeGrow is a Senior Policy Director of Education Choice for ExcelinEd.
For decades, American K-12 education has operated on the premise that students enroll in a school, and that school provides access to everything, including academics, arts, athletics and extracurriculars. The system was built around a single institution—often in a single building—meeting every educational need a student might have. However, that model has been changing in recent years.
The one-institution model of education runs at odds with how modern families make education decisions. A student might thrive academically in a small homeschool co-op, while also possessing the skills necessary to excel on a varsity soccer team. Another might attend a private school that excels in humanities but lacks advanced STEM courses. A student might also be enrolled in a microschool that fits their learning style perfectly but would shine in a large school theatrical production. In this modern education ecosystem, the concept of part-time enrollment provides an opportunity for parents to customize a child’s educational journey by mixing and matching different schooling options across the landscape.
Part-time enrollment is a policy that allows students to take individual courses at a public school or virtual provider without being enrolled at the school full-time. Additionally, it also extends to extracurricular access. This provides the opportunity for homeschooled students, for example, to try out for the basketball team, join the debate team or perform in the school musical at the local public school.
The concept represents a meaningful shift in how we should think about education access. Instead of siloing public, private, charter and home schooling environments, part-time enrollment treats them as parts of a larger, interconnected learning landscape. The fact that a student has a primary education setting does not bar them from having a secondary setting, as well.
This matters greatly for families who have chosen a non-traditional education pathway—for example, a small private school or education at home. These families continue to pay property taxes which fund the public education system, yet their children are shut out of the public good they help finance. The freedom to choose the best learning environment for their child should not mean parents have to forfeit access to the resources to which they already contribute. Part-time enrollment is a policy that honors education choice while ensuring every taxpaying family can access the public schools their community funds.
What does a well-designed version of this policy look like? A few key aspects stand out.
No state has adopted this full suite of policies yet, but the building blocks are being assembled across the country. Many of these policies and trends can be explored through School Choice Matters.
Homeschooling families are arguably the biggest beneficiaries of part-time enrollment. Homeschooling has evolved greatly over the past decade, with the Covid pandemic accelerating a trend already underway. While numbers dipped slightly from a record high in 2021, they are once more on the climb. Homeschooling today encompasses everything from collaborative learning pods to project-based co-ops. These developments demonstrate that homeschooling is no longer a fringe choice; it’s a thriving parental option that is here for the long run.
But even the most thorough and well-designed home education can have its limits. A parent who is an expert in literature may not be equipped to teach AP Chemistry. A microschool of 15 students is unlikely to maintain a volleyball team. Students in these environments can find themselves locked out of opportunities their peers in traditional schools take for granted, despite being in a learning environment that’s the best option for them. Part-time enrollment can eliminate the gap between the right schooling option and additional extracurricular and athletic opportunities.
Part-time enrollment is not an issue relegated to homeschool students; private and charter school families face it too. These families have made a deliberate, often financially burdensome decision, including in some cases a parent leaving the workforce to homeschool. Part-time enrollment eases that burden and ensures families don’t have to choose between the right educational fit and what’s financially sustainable.
Access to extracurricular activities deserves attention because it is where the demand has been greatest in recent years, and where the lack of policy is most noticeable. Athletics, fine arts and competitive debate are more than just after-school activities. They are formative experiences that build character and future opportunity. For homeschooled and other students, the inability to access these activities at a public school has great implications. It can mean missing out on college recruitment, scholarship opportunities, and experiences that are a defining part of developing young minds.
Additionally, the same facilities where any of these activities take place are subsidized by taxpayer dollars. Those facilities regularly open their doors to community members outside of school hours—many people use athletic tracks to walk and run, for instance. The same notion of access should extend to the children of taxpayers who are enrolled elsewhere.
A growing number of states are recognizing this. Students in 10 states currently cannot be denied participation in public school extracurriculars on any basis that would not also apply to their full-time-enrolled counterparts. Iowa recently guaranteed nonpublic school students access to athletics and other activities at a public school when their own school hasn’t offered the activity in at least two years. These are excellent steps in the right direction, but the solutions tend to be piecemeal.
In 2026, a number of states without broad existing choice programs, including Kentucky, Maryland, New York and Delaware, have seen bills that make progress toward giving homeschool students equal access to public school extracurriculars. None have passed, at least not yet, but the pattern reflects an important reality; the homeschool constituency has grown and organized.
The current policy landscape reflects that there is a way to go. About a dozen states have policies giving resident students meaningful access to courses in their local district. Colorado and Kansas extend that access regardless of a student’s home address, which is notably stronger. Nearly 20 states have passed laws allowing students from different school backgrounds to access state-approved virtual courses, making virtual access the most widely adopted form of part-time enrollment currently in the United States. Utah is often cited as a leading state overall. However, nonpublic school students in Utah face restrictions on taking courses from districts outside of their resident districts.
Florida has been developing part-time public and charter school opportunities specifically for students using education scholarship accounts or ESAs. This is a recognition that families using ESAs to attend smaller hybrid schools and microschools shouldn’t have to sacrifice access to athletics or competitive programs at larger institutions. It points toward what a more connected ecosystem could look like.
But the full picture, which includes required district participation, proportional funding, universal virtual access, and fair extracurricular access, exists nowhere yet as a complete policy framework. That is policy work that states can embrace if they want to create a more holistic framework for all families.
Part-time enrollment doesn’t generate the same headlines as ESAs or charter schools. Nevertheless, it may be the most practical form of what families actually want from modern education: the ability to combine the best of different educational elements without being forced to choose just one.
The education ecosystem metaphor is befitting of the current cultural moment. Healthy ecosystems don’t depend on a single dominant species; they thrive because of diversity and the ability of each part to contribute what it does best. A homeschool family that is doing remarkable things academically shouldn’t have to forego that environment so their kids can play baseball. A private school student shouldn’t have to transfer to a public school to access a robotics elective.
Part-time enrollment makes sure that parents don’t have to face these dilemmas. As more families embrace growing modes of learning, building the policies to make that a reality is not just a school choice issue. It is a question of whether education systems are being designed to work for how families want to live today.
