American Legislative Exchange Council

The grade is based on six factors: state academic standards, charter schools, home school regulation burden, private school choice, teacher quality, and digital learning. Because the Education and Workforce Task Force at ALEC focuses the most on private school choice and charter schools, those factors were given double weight in the calculation over overall rank and grade. The weighted grades were converted into a GPA average and an individual rank. We calculated states’ education policy grades in the following manner. First, we converted all rankings into letter grades where possible. For example, we converted homeschooling regulation burden levels as such: none = A, low = B, moderate = C and high = D. Next, we converted all letter grades to a numerical score based on a GPA scale (A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, F=0). Those scores were tallied and divided by the number of categories in which a score was present. In some categories, grades were awarded with pluses and minuses, and numerical conversions were altered appropriately. A grade of B-, for example, was converted to a numeric score of 2.667, while a C+ was converted to 2.333.)   Grade Value Grade Low Score High Score 1 A 3.834 4.166 2 A- 3.5 3.833 3 B+ 3.167 3.499 4 B 2.834 3.166 5 B- 2.5 2.833 6 C+ 2.167 2.499 7 C 1.834 2.166 8 C- 1.5 1.833 9 D+ 1.167 1.499 10 D 0.834 1.166 11 D- 0.5 0.833 12 F 0 0.499