Getting better: How Louisiana is raising reading and math scores

Louisiana, never known for education excellence was the big winner on the 2024 NAEP when it comes to progress in the last few years, writes Chad Aldeman. "It was the closest state to recovering from COVID-related declines in 8th grade reading and math, and it was the only state in which fourth-grade reading scores were higher in 2024 than in 2019."

"Over the last 10 years, Mississippi is the only state to make gains across all performance levels in fourth-grade reading," he writes. "While the bottom was falling out in most states, with the scores of low-performing students falling 10 or 20 or even 30 points, the scores of the lowest-performing students in Mississippi rose 9 points." As a result, Mississippi ranks 7th in fourth-grade reading overall, and is "#1 for low-income students, #3 for Black students, and tied for #1 for Hispanic students."

Go here for the numbers, courtesy of Watershed Advisors. You can ask for rankings by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status.

Louisiana Superintendent Cade Brumley talked to The 74's Kevin Mahnken about what's working and what's next.

The state launched comprehensive education reforms five years ago, says Brumley. Part of that was learning from Mississippi's reading "miracle," which is based on aligning training, teaching and curriculum to the "science of reading."

The next step is to create a research-based model for teaching math. Brumley believes that will include teaching foundational skills. "We’ve done symbolic things, like shipping old-school flash cards with math facts to every elementary school in the state."

When I say “back to basics,” I mean it. We’re going to do base-10 exercises in the school parking lot, whatever it takes. Foundational skills really matter. You’ve got to know third-grade math material if you’re going to be successful in fourth-grade math. 

The state will not waste time "chasing shiny things," says Brumley. Teachers will not be asked to serve as social workers or nurses. "Smart, responsive school systems are thinking about ways to be more efficient and allow their teachers as much time on task as possible."

Some of the NAEP reporting assumes Louisiana's success is all about teaching the phonics part of the "science of reading," writes Natalie Wexler. There's a lot more. The state has ensured that "educators understand the connection between reading and knowledge."

Louisiana "created its own content-rich literacy curriculum, Guidebooks, which begins at third grade is used in most classrooms in the state," and incentivizes districts to adopt other knowledge-building curricula that cover K-2. "It has experimented with a different kind of state reading comprehension test — one that’s based in content students have actually learned about through the curriculum."

If schools "teach to the test," they're teaching the knowledge and subject matter the state has decided students need to understand to build reading comprehension.

In addition, the Guidebooks curriculum provides activities to teach "an explicit method of writing instruction that begins at the sentence level" in grades three through five.

Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama have put in place teacher training and coaching in "structured literacy," writes "Bell Ringer" Holly Korbey.

Starting in 2021, Louisiana trained principals, instructional coaches and teachers in how students learn to read, using a 55-hour virtual course created by the AIM Institute for Learning & Research. With that knowledge, teachers understand how use high-quality instructional materials -- required by the state -- more effectively, says trainer Rod Naquin.