We have known for some time now that our education systems, our schools, have been failing their customers - American parents and their kids. This isn't a new problem, although many school districts, many state governments, and many even at the federal level, controlled by the left, keep coming back to the same old well to try to fix things: Throw more taxpayer money at it.
That seems to be the left's answer to everything. Throw more money at it. The problem is, it rarely works.
Louisiana, on the other hand, may be showing us a better way.
Louisiana spends less per student than most of the country, yet its fourth graders are outperforming peers in nearly every other state.
Data released Jan. 29 from the Urban Institute ranks Louisiana second in the nation for reading when adjusted for race and income, despite per-pupil spending of just $13,800 – thousands of dollars less than what some states spend.
Spending data is sourced from the World Population Review.
By comparison, Vermont spends $33,000 per student but ranks 46th, and Connecticut spends $25,000 yet lands at 13th. Other small, high-spending states like Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Alaska all exceed $20,000 per student but trail far behind Louisiana in the Institute's rankings.
Oregon, Maine, North Dakota, Delaware, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Iowa, Montana, and West Virginia all spend at least $1,000 more per student despite having populations similar or less than that of Louisiana.
How did they do it? Simple: Back to the basics.
Louisiana Superintendent of Education Dr. Cade Brumley credited the progress to sweeping literacy reforms passed over the last five years.
“I think it’s a testament to the work teachers are doing in classrooms and the policies that have been passed and implemented,” Brumley told The Center Square in an interview. “Louisiana has a lot of challenges – poverty and other issues – and we’ve long been challenged educationally. To see Louisiana stack up that way is promising. But we’re not satisfied with just being second. We want to be No. 1 overall, on absolute performance – and that’s the direction we’re trending.”
Louisiana, which was ranked last in fourth grade reading in 2019 according to Brumley, has climbed to 16th overall in raw scores, while leading the nation in reading growth in back-to-back National Assessment of Educational Progress cycles.
The state’s turnaround is rooted in a "back-to-basics" approach. Louisiana banned “three cueing,” a practice that had students guess words from pictures, and mandated phonics-based reading instruction. Every K–3 teacher and principal has completed 50 hours of training in the science of reading, while colleges of education overhauled teacher preparation.
This is a show that should be taken on the road, because boy, we could use it nationwide.
Read More: 'Nation's Report Card' on American Students Is in—and Hoo Boy, Is It Bad
A recent Brookings Institution study showed only a tenuous correlation between spending and student performance. That's no surprise; all one has to do is look at the pronouncements of the national and local teachers' unions and their priorities to see why. The Brookings study concludes:
We conclude by exploring some potential explanations for the unexpectedly small relationship between school spending and educational outcomes that we document. We are particularly interested in distinguishing between explanations that imply that schools in higher-spending states do not use their funding as effectively and explanations related to differences in student needs or input prices, which would not necessarily imply productivity differences across states. Overall, we think the findings suggest that improving schools is not, in general, a mere matter of money (although more money would probably help in some circumstances). This means that policymakers and researchers should devote as much attention to understanding and improving productivity in education as they do to the level and distribution of funding. The weakening relationship between spending and outcomes over time also warrants more attention.
Here's what Brookings misses: The large amount of utter horse squeeze that our schools insist on presenting to our kids.
Ay, that's the rub.
As I am continually pointing out, our entire system of education, from kindergarten through the university level, has but one purpose: To produce young adults with marketable skills. Teaching "transgender awareness" does nothing to that end, nor do drag queen story hours, environmental activism, or climate panic-mongering. Kids could do a lot better studying Aristotle than Thunberg, Cicero over Ru Paul, but too many of our school boards don't seem to get that.
Just teaching reading, writing, math, history, and civics would be a good start. I'm inclined to say "especially history," being something of a history buff myself, and as evidence, I invite you to speak to anyone under the age of 30 and ask them what the Federalist Papers are, what their opposing treatises were called, and their significance in American history. Ask them who Cato the Younger was and what his significance was in the history of Western civilization. Some younger folks know these things, but I can guaran-damn-tee you they didn't learn it in the public school system. When I was in junior high school, I was reading Shakespeare. What are 6th-graders reading in class today?
Mind you, these are kids who have been educated by people who can't define what a woman is, for the most part.
Our education system is broken. Badly. But there's now a light at the end of that tunnel. Louisiana has shown us the way. The rest of the country, especially parents, should stand up and take notice.
