Small stuff paying big dividends for LA education

As is often the case when successful public policy bears its fruit, it’s not headline-grabbing stuff that really made the difference but the nuts and bolts as to why Louisiana is finding more teachers available in public education.

Last week, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education as part of its January meeting received the annual Teacher Exit Data Report, which contains data about trends concerning teachers leaving their current positions in Louisiana public education as well as forecasts of numbers of those being prepared to teach. In academic year 2024 for the second year running, the number of teachers rose in traditional public school classrooms (in other words, not including charter schools), while a lower percentage were leaving these classrooms and for the first time in at least a dozen years a higher number were in the pipeline to enter classrooms in the near future.

This century, for its first fifth Louisiana saw a 23 percent increase in its public school teacher/pupil ratio, although in the past few years it has started to edge downwards even as that might in part be an artifact of fewer students in public classrooms, that ranks by the latest data eighth highest among the states. And while the evidence is at best weak that smaller class sizes improve student performance, lowering the ratio means that more teachers are instructing in fields in which they have competence and they face reduced workloads which both encourage entry into and continued work in the profession.

Comprehending this leads away from claims, often made by teacher unions and repeated in the context of this report, that there exists a “shortage” of teachers. More precisely understood, any “shortage” is not universal but instead confined to certain subject areas such as sciences and exceptionalities education. So, increasing the total number of teachers is salutary in that more of them in scarce areas relieves others from teaching out of area, which should improve student performance.

This understanding also allows better grasping of the role of pay in teacher recruitment and retention that is contrary to another dubious argument that it is a main driver of quality education when enhanced by higher retention and recruitment. Pay itself actually has little relationship with student achievement and as the largest part of educational expenditures is a main reason why generally per pupil spending shows no real relationship with achievement.

However, it does help in attracting quality teachers to enter and stay, which is the real lens through which to view the issue: it’s not the quantity, but quality of educators that matters. A system that throws individuals into classrooms just to lower a ratio amid cries of “shortage” without targeting high-need areas, cultivating quality, and rewarding excellence simply wastes resources.

A review of recent policy changes, a mix of legislatively- and administratively-induced, in Louisiana in the main explains why retention and recruitment are up, consistent with this paradigm. Changes in mentoring for new teachers, as well as a support structure for all in a school relying on mentors and weekly small group gatherings led by teachers, and a differentiated pay regime that rewards individual excellence, targets hard-to-staff subject areas, and encourages placement in economically disadvantaged schools helps to make the profession more attractive. And, higher pay by itself can help, and here the Legislature nailed it by creating incentives for districts to provide it by, essentially, striking a deal that districts’ unfunded accrued pension liabilities the state will take up if additional freed district dollars go to increased salaries, with differential pay incentives mandated as part of the trade (which voters must ratify this spring).

And, in perhaps a perverse way, the relatively-new teacher residency requirement – towards the end of their preparation, education students must intern extensively in a classroom – also has improved retention. Besides providing a realistic hand-on view of what they’re getting into that prepares them better, this also weeds out those less committed, meaning a cohort emerges more likely to stay in education.

Finally, a preview of coming attractions might also contribute to the good news. While the Let Teachers Teach initiative, which seeks to remove non-pedagogical impediments towards the basic educational task, would be expected to encourage a larger teaching pool by removing extraneous matters that might discourage teaching, it only now this academic year is being implemented. Still, teachers and students may have learned of the move and in anticipation of its benefits may have attracted them to the profession or provided increased incentive to stay in it.

There’s no silver bullet in the form of some grand gesture that has created this positive momentum. It’s mainly micro changes that get at what detracts from teaching, and Louisiana policy-makers are on the right track in their pursuit of these.