The hits just keep coming for Louisiana’s school children, validating state and local policy choices and shifts made over the past four years.

In 2021, the Legislature required development and implementation of an early literacy program to boost reading skills among students in kindergarten and early grades, which was to be based on what colloquially might be called a “back to basics” approach and included literacy proficiency in teaching in preparation programs. It has rolled out now up to third grade and indicates not only does the overall score of a grade continue to rise but also students in the aggregate experience a cumulative increase over the years. That could be good news to a lot of schools, as the law mandates use of these data in compiling applicable school performance scores, which will begin next academic year.

Another law passed in 2023 took effect this year and relies on this data. It prohibits promotion of third-graders if they don’t achieve proficiently enough in reading, an approach taken by about half the states. This generates some controversy because some studies purport to show retention for any reason is associated with greater propensity to drop out in high school, especially for racial minority students. However, research also points out that earlier intervention and especially when combined with individualized intervention, which the Department of Education has started to introduce in Louisiana, mitigates this impact. Keep in mind as well that as studies show retention increases the odds of eventual promotion into high school, this demonstrates an associational, not causal, relationship, where the same reason(s) for underachieving early in a school career also explain dropping out, not that retention causes a greater propensity to drop out once aging out of the mandatory schooling age.

And it’s starting to pay off from a larger comparative perspective. While firmly established that Louisiana students hardly suffered in learning during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic era while almost every other state’s children did, all because the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and Superintendent Cade Brumley bucked Democrat former Gov. John Bel Edwards’ draconian decrees to close things in leaving districts to decide what measures to undertake, since then it has built on that. A recent study shows the state’s children improved the most in learning from 2019 to 2022 when adjusted for demographic differences and in raw numbers increased the fourth-most. In fact, scores are higher than before the pandemic despite the pandemic and the state’s relative ranking is its highest ever on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Included in that was a huge hike in NAEP reading scores for fourth graders, the highest of any state that not only vaulted the state several places higher in reading rankings, but also among economically disadvantaged, saw that cohort shoot up all the way to 11^th highest. And consider this happened prior to these students being impacted by the changes in literacy instruction, which likely will compound that improvement.

While the 2021 legislation passed unanimously it didn’t delve into specifics, with the choices made by BSE and DOE in implementation that led to success. The 2023 legislation split by party lines, but the Republican majority prevailed and with enough votes that an Edwards veto would have been futile.

That path laid out in these changes has proven fruitful (to the point Brumley was considered to lead the federal Department of Education under the returning GOP Pres. Donald Trump Administration). Policy-makers shouldn’t allow themselves to become distracted from it.