Six years ago BESE initiated a policy to give parents and citizens a better idea of how their local public schools were performing by doing something that made total sense in the world of education – they gave the schools letter grades. The letter grades replaced a star system of tracking performance which was well-intentioned, […]
It’s no secret that people have a high disdain for Congress. Real Clear Politics reports that based on the average of polls it tracks, the current approval rating of Congress is about 12-percent. That’s not the lowest it’s been in the last few years, but it’s still scraping pretty close to the bottom. Why is […]
This year there are three constitutional amendments on the October 14 ballot. CABL has researched and analyzed the amendments and offers our recommendations to voters. Don’t forget, early voting runs from September 30 – October 7. Amendment # 1 Property Tax Exemption for Construction Materials This amendment provides an exemption from local property taxes for […]
It is ironic that as Louisiana marks the 12th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, another epic disaster is ongoing just across our state line in Houston. At the same time, parts of our own state are again threatened by extensive flooding and the prospects of another extended period of recovery. The month of August sadly seems […]
College students are heading back to class this week, but for close to 50,000 of them, the experience is a little different than it was at this time last year. That’s because in 2016 they were returning under the threat of a coming cut in their TOPS scholarships. It didn’t happen for that fall semester, […]
There was some progress on the education front this week. No, this time it wasn’t about something that happened in the classroom, though that’s the thing that really counts. Instead two things happened that will keep our education improvement efforts moving forward. The first was the news that the U.S. Department of Education has approved […]
It’s not great news, but at least it’s encouraging. Louisiana’s economy which had been shedding jobs by the thousands for months seems to be stabilizing. Whether the slow uptick that’s beginning to materialize is enough to translate into a more stable state budget remains to be seen, but if the state’s recession is indeed over, […]
CNBC recently released its annual ranking of “America’s Top States for Business.” It would have been nice if it had contained a big surprise for Louisiana, because that would have meant we were not in the bottom 10 of states for the 7th year in a row. But sadly, no surprises. It did, however, come […]
This week the state Department of Education released the results of the 2016-2017 LEAP tests for students in grades 3-8. Overall, they show that Louisiana maintained the growth in scores that we have achieved over the last few years, but we were unable to build on them. That’s disappointing, but when looking at long-term trends […]
It is with bittersweet feelings that all of us at CABL bid “farewell” to Stephanie Desselle. Stephanie has been a part of the CABL family for more than 20 years. She officially retired at the end of June after serving the organization – and in turn – our state, in a variety of impactful capacities. […]
