(The Center Square) — Louisiana implemented new educational choice scholarships, accountability systems, and programs during 2024.
The Louisiana Giving All True Opportunity to Rise scholarship program, or GATOR, was signed into law this year to provide educational scholarship accounts to families across the state so they can have more choice in what schools their children attend.
The funds can also be used for tutors, online school tuition, curriculum or even to fund a hybrid program where a student attends a private school part time.
Although the program is a major project for the department of education, it doesn’t officially start until 2025 as some housekeeping still needs to be done. Every year the legislature will have to decide how much money is allocated to this program as they see fit, so it’s experimental at first.
EdChoice, a national organization, and the Pelican Institute, a Louisiana institution, both supported the GATOR program. Nathan Sanders, the policy and advocacy director of EdChoice, says Louisiana is the 12th state to go universal.
With Louisiana’s history of lackluster educational ranks, the Pelican State has also worked to improve accountability in schools and rework the systems they use to educate.
The biggest program discussed in legislative and local committee meetings was the Let Teachers Teach Program, which aims to help teachers focus on teaching by reducing classroom disruptions and unnecessary bureaucracy.
This includes shifting training regimens, paying for additional non-academic work, decoupling student behavior and the accountability system, limiting cellphone use in classrooms and abolishing antiquated lesson plans.
The accountability system has also been retooled, and with that, has been debated in every K-12 study group and public education meeting since the new leadership took over the board earlier this year.
Louisiana state Superintendent Cade Brumley said the accountability system was necessary to create higher expectations, make the assessment process simpler, and promote career and college readiness.
To do so, the system focuses on improvement cycles and coaching for the student to continuously get better rather than weighty emphasis on testing of satisfactory grades. It also places a heavier priority on career readiness, as opposed to fixating on college preparation.
Whether the new the programs are working is impossible to know because of the small sample size, but what is true is that Louisiana’s test scores have improved this year.
Louisiana students this year achieved the highest scores under the current 150-point system. The 2024 school performance score of 80.2 improved by nearly two points from the previous year, a 78.5 score.
Louisiana has also achieved its highest national rankings ever, moving from 46th to 40th on the U.S. News & World Report Best States ranking.
Other studies showed growth in Louisiana as well, with the national report card saying the state’s fourth graders led the country in reading growth and economically disadvantaged fourth graders improved from 42nd to 11th in reading.
ExcelinEd’s new Early Literacy Matters put the state at the top of a national list for adopting a comprehensive early literacy policy to provide students with the foundational reading skills to learn, graduate, and succeed.
This resulted in Louisiana students in kindergarten through third grade improving their reading proficiency by 2.3 percentage points on a literacy screener given at the beginning of this school year.
The overall score for these grades was 46.9 in 2024. First grade grew by 4 to 49.9, second grade improved by 3.8 to 54.5, and third grade increased by 2.4 to 54.
The progress doesn’t stop there. The state education department also released 2024 Early Childhood Performance Profiles Wednesday.
The latest early childhood data reveals a 5.49 statewide performance rating, indicating a 0.07 increase from 2022-2023. More than 95% of early childhood sites are rated proficient or higher, with 91% of school districts rated as high proficient or excellent.
Brumley says the growth can be attributed to new practices.
“Louisiana students are benefitting from quality instruction, sound policy, and a return to basic fundamentals like phonics,” said Brumley in a department news release. “We’re seeing encouraging growth and must take advantage of this opportunity to continue aligning our state around what we know is best for students and teachers.”
