Once again, we got some bad news about the reading proficiency of young students in Louisiana. Since the pandemic, the number of third graders struggling to read has risen precipitously. Today, 41% of them are not reading at grade level, according to the most recent LEAP scores. While not surprising, given the disruptions caused by […]
Louisiana’s latest round of LEAP scores are in and they come with a bit of good news and a reality check that is hard to ignore. Generally, students rebounded slightly from the COVID-related drop that occurred in 2021, but they are still behind their performance levels before the pandemic. The good news out of the […]
It didn’t get a lot of attention, but last week the Biden administration announced plans to open more than 700,000 acres in the Gulf of Mexico to commercial offshore windfarms. The area being targeted is in federal waters off Lake Charles and Galveston. While it’s just the beginning of a very long process, it could […]
We recently spotlighted Louisiana’s challenges with teacher shortages and some of the things the Legislature did this year to address the problem. It’s a major issue and CABL recently had the opportunity to dig into it a little deeper in a new podcast from the state Department of Education that is actually both fun and […]
Like almost every other state in the country, Louisiana is facing a critical shortage of teachers. It was happening before the pandemic, but the impact of COVID 19 on schools has only made things worse. This year the Louisiana Legislature took some initial steps to try to address the problem, but this is an issue […]
This year’s legislative session was never billed as an “education” session, as sometimes happens. But as it turns out it was a big one for public education at all levels, especially when it comes to new investments in students and educators. There were more than 170 bills introduced on education this year, more than 10% […]
This week the House Education Committee killed a series of bills that sought to create new state laws governing how public schools teach certain issues surrounding race and gender. Though they never explicitly mention Critical Race Theory, they were widely seen as an effort to ban the use of that concept, even though it is […]
This week BESE had an important discussion about our expectations for students. This one dealt with high school graduation in the world of COVID. The issues at the heart of it are worth considering. Louisiana schools, students, and educators have been through two years of COVID. It closed school early in 2020, caused a shaky […]
A new national survey on public education provides some food for thought for Louisiana. It finds that people across the country believe education is an important priority and they think some major changes are required to improve student achievement. The poll results are reported by the national education reform group The 74, which takes its […]
Until somewhat recently, the coming of another legislative session wasn’t something higher education officials were exactly looking forward to. For a period of nearly a decade beginning around 2008, legislative sessions meant budget cuts. In recent years, that’s begun to change, and this year’s session looks to be another one marked by a return to […]
