If you want to understand why Louisiana elementary
and secondary education students only haltingly have made progress in
achievement from the bottom of the states, look no further than the attitudes
expressed by some representatives of those with the task of educating them.
A common myth spread by the public education industry is that Louisiana students do so poorly because there’s not enough money – chiefly in teacher salaries – slung its way. Not only is this a false narrative, it is predicated on a false assumption.
A report earlier this year issued by the Reason Foundation explains why. Reviewing financial and achievement data form 2002-20, it notes that the assumed relationship between resources shoveled to schools and student achievement is essentially nonexistent. It noted that states which hardly budged on per pupil spending notched at least as large, if not larger, gains on the nationally-normed National Assessment of Educational Progress test than did states that increased theirs by around 50 percent. Certainly, resources matter but clearly other factors in fact are more important in spurring better outcomes.
Not that Louisiana has been unwaveringly chintzy in spending on education. As of 2020, it ranked 36th in per pupil spending, and the latest 2022 data adjusted for personal income had it ranked 21st on this statistic. In notable categories for that metric, it ranked 40th in salaries and 24th in benefits; and 17th in school and 18th in general administration. If anything, too much money is going to administration and not enough to the classroom, which outside of the 70 percent instructional spending mandate the distribution of which in Louisiana is left up to local education agencies.
This has come on the back of extra effort to pump money into schools. The 18-year period saw per pupil revenues in the state rise by nearly a third, good enough for 12th highest among the states. On the spending side, while instructional spending went up only about 15 percent, 28th highest, benefits nearly doubled, at 15th highest, even as inflation-adjusted salaries declined slightly, putting the state in 27th place. Meanwhile, support services rocketed up about 50 percent per pupil, ranking 12th in growth. Clearly compared to its peers, Louisiana was trying as hard if not harder to boost resources going towards education – and keep in mind this was in an era of slight student population decline that, all things equal, to maintain service levels should have seen small overall decreases in total spent.
Yet progress has come slowly even with some noticeable recent achievement gains. Through the 2019 NAEP scoring, among the states and District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, Louisiana ranked in growth on 4th grade reading ninth and on 4th grade mathematics 28th; on eighth grade reading eighth and on eighth grade math 18th. But as the state ranked so lowly already, these gains brought up its rankings respectively to just 48th in all categories except 44th in eighth grade reading. In 2022, the state ranked respectively 41st, 38th, 43rd, and 44th – significant improvement among the states because almost all states lost ground during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic so even as Louisiana students as a whole treaded water most other states’ fell back (“OK, Brumley was right.”)
Given these data, one factor that must stand out as influencing outcomes is the combination of expectations and accountability, which have escalated in Louisiana continuously for the past quarter-century. Demand more and provide incentives to reach those levels by installing direct accountability measures such as performance scores for districts and schools and indirect influences such as expanding educational choice, and the public education industry should rise to the occasion.
The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has become more firmly than ever attached to that ethos. Wishing to extend it further, last month it revamped accountability scoring standards that particularly affected high schools in raising the scoring mechanism for achievement measured by standardized testing from 25 to 75 percent. These scores can be used by families to compare high school quality and can be used by the state to force corrective actions onto particularly low-scoring schools.
But representatives of the public education industry weren’t amused, apparently don’t want to make the extra effort to extend gains that the new standard provokes, and would prefer to keep things as they are if at the very least to preserve jobs. That’s the vibe that came out of a meeting of the Louisiana House K-12 Education Study Group, comprised of the exact stakeholders who will have to work harder to boost student achievement: superintendents, principals, teachers and other kinds of educators. The task force that is to report back to the House of Representatives was born through legislation authored by Republican state Rep. Dennis Bamburg, a former Bossier Parish School Board member who also successfully enacted into law a bill weakening accountability for high schools by allowing them to opt out of all students taking the ACT, a nationally-normed exam with high validity and reliability in measuring knowledge and predicting future academic success, as part of the evaluation process.
In its first meeting, group members alleged the new standards failed to assess accurately student skills while taking away from crucial instructional time. In particular, they objected to counting scores of students with limited grasp of English and that such emphasis didn’t tell the whole picture – one speaker lamented that had the standard been in place a high school whose valedictorian could muster just an 18 on the ACT (the national average typically is between 20-21 and even Louisiana’s is higher than 18) but later completed college successfully would have penalized the school.
But if the point of education is to enable students to succeed in life, they have to be able to communicate, which should be a primary function of schools and to which they should be held accountable. And while knowledge base and intelligence certainly impact the chances of student success, other personal factors also come into play, yet it is incumbent on schools to maximize students’ chances by giving them the best possible base upon which to build where lower test scores cast doubt on educators having accomplished that. This kind of assessment does take away a small amount of instructional time, but it’s more than worth it to know how well schools are preparing students.
The whining displayed at the meeting demonstrates the continued resistance within the Louisiana educational establishment that wants to evade meaningful accountability standards precisely because it makes them accountable and thusly they must work harder and smarter or be exposed as not up to the task. The gripe session that ensued might be music to the ears of Bamburg and the minority in the Legislature, mostly Democrats, more prone to advancing the interests of adults rather than of children on education issues, but the majority shows no signs of letting it sway them from their mission to build on educational progress and BESE remains committed to that as much as ever. It’s an accountability measure like this necessary to get the minds right of the public education industry so that they can join in this quest for excellence.
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