(The Center Square) – Two B’s and two C’s offset a bad mark related to open enrollment for North Carolina in the ALEC Educational Freedom Index 2026 released Wednesday.
A year ago, the state’s Opportunity Scholarship Program making universal school choice available to all helped the state leap from 35th to 12th. A year later, the Tarheel State is 13th with an overall grade of B-plus, says the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Taxpayers provide more money for education than any other part of the state budget. For fiscal year 2024-25, the figure was $17.9 billion; spending levels are the same for 2025-26 until a new state budget that was due July 1 is passed. First-term Democrat Mo Green is the elected superintendent leading the Department of Public Instruction.
The state has about 1.5 million schoolchildren and 90,000 public school educators.
The grades of B were for student-center funding programs and charter schools. The C’s were for homeschooling and virtual schools.
ALEC’s grade in open enrollment was an F – same as a year ago. To improve this, the state would need to “require public school districts to participate in both intradistrict and interdistrict open enrollment, subject to reasonable exceptions like space limitations.” It also would require transparency on open enrollment policies and how many seats are available and make public how many and why students are rejected.
A note at the beginning of the report says all programs and policies are as of June 1 last year.
Florida earned the No. 1 spot for the third consecutive year. Texas’ leap of 15 spots included clearing North Carolina and moving to ninth while Louisiana fell 24 spots to No. 33.
Ten states were A-minus or better. Ohio (11th) and Alabama (12th) joined North Carolina with the lone B-plus grades.
In scoring categories, North Carolina got 32 points (10th nationally, a B) in education freedom programs; 9.63 points (eighth, B) in charter schools; 10.5 points (tie 16th, C) in virtual schooling; 7.5 points (tie 24th, C) in homeschooling; and no points (tie 32nd, F) in open enrollment.
Education freedom programs could generate up to 40 points for each state; charter schools 15 points based on authorizers, growth, operations and equity; homeschooling 15 points graded on the regulatory environment; virtual schooling 15 points based on state or district availability and approval process; and open enrollment 15 points tied to allowing interdistrict and intradistrict, transparency in transfers and a prohibition on charging tuition to transferring students.
ALEC bills itself as “America’s largest nonpartisan, voluntary membership organization of state legislators dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism. Comprised of nearly one-quarter of the country’s state legislators and stakeholders from across the policy spectrum, ALEC members represent more than 60 million Americans and provide jobs to more than 30 million people in the United States.”
