When Louisiana made gains in reading proficiency in a recent Congressionally-mandated assessment, it stuck out.
NAEP — known as the nation’s report card — painted a grim picture about reading skills across the country, with an uncomfortable number of fourth and eighth graders scoring below basic reading levels.
But Louisiana was an exception.
The state has one of the highest rates of illiteracy in the U.S. Yet, in the latest NAEP results, the state performed better than it had in 2019, making it one of the rare places to see academic recovery. Louisiana rose in the national rankings of student performance, most notably in fourth-grade reading, where it moved from 42nd in the nation to 16th.
Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, pointed to Louisiana’s improvement as a silver lining in the gray cloud of dismal scores. “I would not say that hope is lost, and I would not say that we cannot turn this around. It’s been demonstrated that we can, even in reading,” Carr said.
But the nation’s report card famously doesn’t establish causes, only giving a snapshot of learning. So if there are any insights buried in Louisiana’s bump, what are they? And will the current uncertainty around federal education programs undermine them?
Blurry Vision
Initial analysis suggested the science of reading — which is often understood as just phonics — deserves kudos for Louisiana's improved performance, according to Natalie Wexler, author of “Beyond the Science of Reading.”
Cautiously, Wexler stresses that NAEP scores are only intended as a rough barometer of where students are rather than what instructional approaches are working. Indeed, NAEP does not even purport to test students’ ability to decode words, Wexler says. It’s about comprehension. So in Wexler's view, the answer likely also includes policies meant to bolster students' academic knowledge and grasp of syntax.
For some in Louisiana, the answer came down to fundamentals.
Cade Brumley, state superintendent of education, proclaimed that the improved ranking was a reflection of the state’s back-to-basics approach to literacy: “Education has been overcomplicated for too long,” Brumley said.
In fact, Louisiana has undertaken significant literacy reform in recent years, including a 2021 law that requires teacher training in literacy instruction, though a high percentage of teachers have reportedly not received the training.
The state has also poured money into tutoring corp programs.
Last year, for example, the legislature invested more than 30 million into targeted programs that included vouchers for high-dose tutoring, an intensive form of small group tutoring identified as a key way to spur academic recovery post pandemic.
A state law also allows schools to hold back third graders who fail to meet proficiency on screenings.
While Louisiana was singled out for its reading score improvements on the latest NAEP assessments, other Southern states — Mississippi and Tennessee, for instance — saw smaller bumps in their national report card scores.
Some argue this isn’t an accident.
Karen Vaites, a parent advocate, dubbed it a “Southern Surge,” which she attributes to those states passing a package of reforms encompassing teacher training and curriculum improvements.
It's an intriguing pattern.
Wexler, the education writer, suggests that blue states haven't embraced phonics or knowledge-based curricula to the same degree as red states. It doesn’t necessarily make sense, but it sets up a dynamic in those places where affluent students acquire the knowledge they need to succeed outside of the classroom while low-income students don’t, she argues.
But there are other proposed takeaways that may impact future policy.
In Louisiana, conservative legislators are eager to bring school choice into this conversation.
The state passed universal school choice in 2024, and there’s a robust charter system in Louisiana.
State Rep. Julie Emerson, a Republican, told EdSurge that alternatives to public schools have surged in Louisiana because the state’s education system has ranked at or near the bottom for years — scoring 50th in fourth-grade reading in 2019, for example. That’s shaken confidence in public schools, at least compared to nearby states like Texas, which have fared better, she argued. Within the state, alternative schools offer the possibility of better education outcomes overall, she said, because they allow families to “find the right fit for each kid.”
Regardless, verifying any potential answers, or assessing how they develop in the future, could get more difficult.
Troubled Waters
Whatever the lesson, there is also uncertainty at the moment.
The Trump administration’s federal purges and cuts have left education researchers scrambling to assess the damage.
The concern? Scrapping programs could remove important sources of data. For instance, researchers use Common Core of Data to access demographic information about schools, such as the number of English learners or the number of special-education students. And districts and schools rely on What Works Clearinghouse, an Institute of Education Sciences initiative going back to 2002, for information about programs in the marketplace. Both look to have been impacted by the administration's contract cancellations, announced publicly on X (formerly Twitter).
This could have repercussions.
Curriculum information and professional development programs usually claim to be “evidence-based” and “standards-aligned” but what those terms mean vary considerably, depending on the provider, according to Heather Hill, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “For instance, I have seen curriculum materials and professional development programs claim impacts on students on the basis of a single case study — i.e., this one school tried out our product and their scores went up (without an experimental control, it’s extremely difficult to verify such claims),” Hill wrote in an email to EdSurge.
Ultimately, Hill believes the loss of clearinghouse information will make it tougher for schools to select high-quality instructional programs: “[Without it] schools will be back in the 1990s, when it was the Wild West of instructional programs selling materials to schools with little basis in evidence that they work to help kids learn,” she wrote.
So far, the National Principal and Teacher Survey, the main source of information of teacher preparation and attrition, will continue.
But there's room for apprehension.
At first, NAEP assessments were thought to have been spared from the cuts. But last week the U.S. Department of Education yanked a planned assessment of 17-year-olds.
For the moment, the cuts have sown chaos, with researchers expressing vexation and concern as the education system sits in limbo.
Even assuming it survives intact, NAEP only gives a periodic glimpse at how students are performing, says Alexander Kurz, a principal consultant for the Center on Reinventing Public Education.
These recent cuts limit the important signals from the field, limiting visibility into what causes the trends noted in NAEP, Kurz says.
