Sarah Hess started taking her toddler, Josie, to Mickey Markey Playground in 2010 because she thought it would be a safe place to play after Josie had been diagnosed with lead poisoning.

Hess had traced the problem to the crumbling paint in her family’s century-old home. While it underwent lead remediation, the family stayed in a newer, lead-free house in the Bywater neighborhood near Markey, where Josie regularly played on the swings and slides.

“Everyone was telling us the safest place to play was outside at playgrounds, so that’s where we went,” Hess said.

Josie’s next blood test was a shock. “It skyrocketed,” Hess said. Josie’s lead levels had leapt to nearly five times the national health standard.

When the soil at Markey was tested in late 2010, it too was found to have dangerously high levels of lead. But the city took no meaningful action to inform Markey’s users or make the park safe. Parents started posting warning signs at the park and flooded City Hall with outraged calls and emails. Holding Josie in her arms, Hess made an impassioned speech to the City Council.

In short order, the city had hired a company to test Markey and other parks, and pledged to fix the lead problem wherever it was found.

“I couldn’t have been more pleased,” Hess said. “They were totally into it. My impression was they were going to make them all lead-free parks.”

But a Verite News investigation conducted over four months in 2025 found that lead pollution in New Orleans parks not only persists, it is more widespread than previously known. Dozens of city parks with playgrounds remain unsafe, including Markey and others that underwent city-sponsored lead remediation in 2011. The city does not appear to have conducted any major remediation or lead testing of parks since that time.

The findings indicate that city officials fell short in their cleanup efforts then, and that a very large number of New Orleans children are exposed to excessive amounts of lead now, said Howard Mielke, a retired Tulane University toxicologist and one of the nation’s leading experts on lead contamination.

“It’s a failed program,” he said. “They didn’t do what they needed to do to bring the lead levels down in a single park.”

Verite News reporters tested hundreds of soil samples from 84 city parks with playgrounds in fall 2025. Adrienne Katner, a lead contamination researcher with Louisiana State University, verified the results. The testing found that about half the parks had lead concentrations that exceed established in 2024 for soil in urban areas.

“I am surprised they haven’t been tested and mitigated,” said Gabriel Filippelli, an Indiana University biochemist who studies lead exposure. “If there’s evidence of kids playing in soils that are as high as [Verite’s testing] described, that’s kind of horrifying.”

Public health researchers and doctors say that children under 6 absorb lead-laden dust more easily than adults, contaminating their blood and harming the long-term development of their brains and nervous systems. There is no known safe exposure level for children, and even trace amounts can result in behavioral problems and lower cognitive abilities.

Find the lead levels at your playground

New Orleans is in financial straits with a of about $220 million, and it’s unclear what priority or resources Mayor Helena Moreno will, or even can, allocate to restart lead remediation efforts. In response to the financial crisis, Moreno has eliminated dozens of positions and plans to one day per pay period to save money. Moreno’s administration did not respond to requests for comment.

The city doesn’t routinely test for lead in parks, said Larry Barabino, chief executive officer of the New Orleans Recreation Development Commission, the agency that oversees most of the city’s parklands. He confirmed the last significant effort to test parks ended in 2011.

He called Verite’s results “definitely concerning” and pledged to work with city departments and local experts to potentially remediate unsafe parks.

“Safety is our number one priority here at NORD,” Barabino said. “If there’s anything that’s a true environmental concern or risk, that’s something that we believe in definitely making sure we take action.”

Andrea Young heard similar pledges 14 years ago. Like Hess, Young had a child who frequented Markey and had high lead levels in her blood. The mothers helped form a community group called NOLA Unleaded that pushed the city to clean up Markey and other parks. Young thought they had succeeded, but said she now realizes that the city had not done enough.

“It makes me question the value of the work that (the city) did, and the safety we felt in letting our kids play there again,” Young said with a trembling voice. “It just sort of shakes me up a little bit, you know?”

Testing New Orleans parks

Verite News conducted soil tests on the city parks that property inventories and maps list as having play structures. Samples were taken from surface soil, which is most likely to come into contact with children’s hands and toys or be inhaled when kicked up during play or blown by the wind.

Lead is typically found in very small amounts in natural soil. The average lead abundance in U.S. soils is 26 parts per million, equivalent to less than an ounce of lead per ton of soil.

Soil samples collected by Verite from New Orleans parks averaged about 121 ppm—nearly five times the national average.

The federal hazard level for lead in soil was 400 ppm , when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Joe Biden lowered it to 200 ppm for most residential areas and 100 ppm in areas like New Orleans with multiple sources of lead exposure, including contaminated soil, lead paint and .

More of a guide than a mandate, the EPA screening levels can steer federal cleanup actions and are often adopted by state and city governments to inform local responses to lead contamination.

California has long had a much of 80 ppm. Of the New Orleans parks Verite tested, 52 – or about two-thirds – had results that fail California’s standard.

In October, President Donald Trump’s administration rolled back the EPA screening standards. The administration retained the 200 ppm threshold for residential areas but eliminated the 100 ppm level for areas with multiple lead sources.

The administration didn’t dispute the validity of the 100 ppm threshold, but that a single level “reduces inconsistent implementation and provides clarity to decision makers and the public.”

The change, according to Mielke, doesn’t align with the science, which has long shown that children are harmed when exposed to soil with levels below 100 ppm. He was one of several scientists who had pushed for lower thresholds since the EPA established its first screening levels more than 30 years ago.

Mielke said the 100 ppm screening level should still be applied in urban areas, especially New Orleans. The city has a long history of soil contaminated with lead from a combination of sources, including lead-based paint, leaded gasoline and emissions from waste incinerators and other industrial facilities. Lead particles spread easily by wind, eventually settling in the topsoil.

Verite found lead levels above 100 ppm at numerous places that get heavy use by children. Lead contamination more than four times that level was recorded near the slides at Markey, outside a playhouse in Brignac Park near Magazine Street and at a well-worn spot under an oak tree at Desmare Park in Bayou St. John.

Elevated lead levels tended to follow the age of the neighborhood. The city’s older neighborhoods, including the Irish Channel and Algiers Point, had some of the highest lead levels, while Gentilly and New Orleans East, which were developed mostly after the 1950s, tended to be lower, according to Verite’s findings.

The highest lead levels were found at Evans Park in the Freret neighborhood. Beside a low-hanging oak branch, on ground worn bare by children’s play, Verite recorded lead at 5,998 ppm, nearly 60 times the urban soils threshold.

Search all of Verite News’ test results

Verite spoke to more than a dozen parents at playgrounds across the city, and most were surprised at the levels of lead in the parks.

In the Irish Channel, Meg Potts watched her son run around the dusty playground at Brignac. All of Verite’s samples at the park surpassed the threshold the EPA deemed safe for urban areas, reaching nearly 600 ppm.

Potts knew high lead levels existed in the city, but didn’t realize her neighborhood park could be a source of exposure for her son.

“ I’m just thinking about all of this now because he’s had to go in and have his lead tested,” she said. “He’s like right on the cusp of having too high lead.”

The invisibility of lead makes it challenging for parents to manage among other priorities. Meghan Stroh, whose children often play at Markey, said it’s hard for parents to protect their children from every threat, but tackling lead at parks is one way the city could help.

“It’s a concern that I have amidst a myriad of others,” she said while holding her 10-month-old daughter on her hip. “So, it would be nice to have one thing checked off the list.”

Katner, the LSU researcher, said Verite’s results can serve as a starting point for city officials to conduct more comprehensive testing in parks, noting that even a single lead hotspot in a park is concerning.

“ It doesn’t matter where it is in the soil; there’s exposure there,” she said. “The kid playing in that part of the park is going to get the highest dose.”

A legacy of lead

Before the 1970s, lead was nearly everywhere. A that the vast majority of the U.S. population born between 1960 and 1980 was poisoned by dangerously high levels of lead in early childhood. On average, lead exposure has resulted in a loss of 2.6 IQ points for more than half the population through 2015.

Lead pollution from cars spread into areas near roads, especially major thoroughfares, until leaded gasoline was phased out by 1996. Similarly, emissions from trash incinerators and industrial sites contaminated the surrounding soil. New Orleans had at least eight incinerators that blew toxic gases and lead dust over several neighborhoods, including Algiers Point and St. Roch, until they were closed in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Today, the most pervasive source of lead in soil is degraded paint. Lead-based paint was used extensively for homes and buildings until it was banned in 1978. In New Orleans, most of the houses were built before 1980, according to the . As the paint deteriorates, Tulane University epidemiologist Felicia Rabito said it can chip or turn into toxic dust.

“ The leaded paint goes straight into the dust and it goes straight into the soils, which is a major source of exposure for young children in the city,” said Rabito, who studies lead poisoning and other health conditions.

Children under 6 years old are especially vulnerable, in part because they love to stick their hands in their mouths. Rabito stressed that kids don’t have to eat the soil directly to be harmed. Children putting their thumbs in their mouths after playing on a seesaw or eating a dropped Cheerio can be enough.

Even a one-time exposure to contaminated soil can raise the level of lead in a child’s blood, Rabito said. They’re at an even higher risk if they have a calcium deficiency.

”Lead mimics calcium, so the body essentially thinks that the lead is calcium,” Rabito said. After the lead enters the bloodstream, it’s hard to fully remove. Most of it is stored long-term in the body’s bones, accumulating over time and .

Rabito recommended that parents steer clear of contaminated playgrounds because it’s hard to avoid exposure.

The only way to know if a child has lead poisoning is a medical test. By

Louisiana healthcare providers to ensure every child between 6 months and 6 years of age receives at least two blood tests by age 1 and age 2.

But the law did not include a way to enforce those testing requirements, so many providers don’t test, according to a from the Louisiana Department of Health. The screening rate has always been very low in New Orleans, Rabito said. In 2022, fewer than one in 10 children under 6 years old were screened for lead poisoning in the city, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“ There’s not anything that we can say about lead poisoning or lead levels in children in Orleans Parish with any scientific certainty,” Rabito said. “ As you see from your own testing, there are different pockets of contamination depending upon where you’re playing. Parents really need to get their children tested.”

Limited soil testing, patchy fixes

In 2010, Claudia Copeland joined Hess and other Markey regulars in having their kids tested for lead. One of Copeland’s children, born in Germany, had a blood lead level considered normal at the time. But her younger, New Orleans-born child showed elevated levels that set off alarm bells for Copeland, a molecular biologist.

“There really is no safe level, but it was really bad,” she said.

Copeland hurriedly made signs and posted them around the park. “THE SOIL IN MARKEY PARK IS TOXIC!” they blared in big black letters.

“The city was aware, but they just were not doing anything,” Copeland said. “Parents needed to know. We were all so ignorant about what was in the soil. You know, we’re all saying ‘a little dirt never hurt.’”

Outcry from parents prompted the city to first fence off and padlock Markey, and then promise a more comprehensive response.

The New Orleans health commissioner at the time, Karen DeSalvo, said the city should do “everything we can to understand what the risk might be and to remediate it.” But she also appeared to minimize the dangers of lead at city parks, saying other health risks, like the flu, were greater.

“In the scheme of the many public health challenges that kids have, it’s not the greatest challenge, honestly,” DeSalvo in February 2011.

Then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu was more definitive, pledging a swift, far-reaching action.

“The city will take all necessary measures to investigate possible lead contamination in other parks and playgrounds and remediate them as soon as possible,” he said .

Two months later, testing and remediation were completed at several parks. Members of NOLA Unleaded celebrated and brought their kids back to familiar playgrounds.

But Verite’s review of work orders shows that the city’s testing and remediation efforts were limited to a small number of parks. Despite city leaders’ assurances of a broad response, only 16 parks were tested in 2011, according to documents obtained through public records requests.

Mielke and NOLA Unleaded’s members believed most or all of the city’s parks were tested, pointing to Landrieu’s promises and an that reported that the city agreed to “test all of the public parks in the city.”

“I guess I kind of believed that, and then you realize that that’s not actually true,” said Young after learning the city’s testing was more limited than she thought. “If the majority of the parks they tested were high (in lead), what would make them think all the others are fine?”

Landrieu did not respond to a request for comment. DeSalvo, who retired last year as Google’s chief health officer, said “extremely limited resources” forced the city to weigh its response to lead contamination with the many other health threats residents faced.

“We worked to address the range of exposures whenever possible with the resources we could muster,” she said.

Of the 16 parks the city tested, only two – A.L. Davis in Central City and Norwood Thompson in Gert Town – had levels below 400 ppm, the federal threshold at the time, and were deemed safe by Materials Management Group, or MMG, which was and still is the city’s environmental consultant. One park, Evans in the Freret neighborhood, was found to have lead levels as high as 610 ppm but wasn’t remediated for reasons not made clear in testing documents and progress reports submitted by MMG. Thirteen parks, including Markey, underwent remediation after testing showed the properties exceeded the 400 ppm threshold that MMG used to determine soil hazard levels.

Fourteen years later, Verite’s testing found A.L. Davis and Norwood Thompson have comparatively low lead levels, although A.L. Davis had one sample slightly above the 100 ppm threshold.

Evans, which did not undergo remediation despite unsafe lead levels in 2011, had the highest lead reading of all soil samples collected by Verite. Alongside a low-hanging oak branch, on ground worn bare by children’s play, Verite recorded lead at 5,998 ppm, a level more than twice that of Verite’s second-highest sample, taken at Soraporu Park in the Irish Channel.

In 2011, MMG recommended remediation at Evans, including installing a fabric layer topped with clean soil in three areas, including the northeast corner where Verite collected the 5,998 ppm sample. MMG noted in a 2015 progress report that it had not performed the work, but the firm did not explain why.

MMG did not respond to requests for comment.

Documents obtained by Verite show that the city’s remediation efforts focused on covering patches of contaminated soil rather than the comprehensive treatment Mielke recommended to city leaders in 2011. Mielke had urged the city to fully cover play areas with clean soil, a strategy his research showed was highly effective in reducing lead exposure.

In 2010, Mielke led an effort to reduce lead exposure at 10 child care center playgrounds in New Orleans. He and his team covered the entire footprint of each playground with water-pervious plastic fabric and then six inches of Mississippi River sediment from the Bonnet Carre Spillway, a source of clean, cheap and easily accessible soil. Lead levels fell, with most playgrounds testing below 10 ppm.

The remediation at city parks also used fabric and soil layers, but the coverings were mostly limited to areas with lead levels above 400 ppm, leaving many hazardous areas exposed. Testing and remediation reports obtained by Verite typically show soil capping in only two or three spots, with most of each park remaining untreated.

The remediation at Comiskey Park in Mid-City, for instance, was limited to a 200-square-foot circle in a soccer field and a 400-square-foot strip along a basketball court. No remediation was done near the playground, where Verite’s testing detected lead levels between 155 ppm and 483 ppm.

At Easton Park in Bayou St. John, the 2011 remediation covered four areas totalling about 4,700 square feet, but the park’s playground was left untouched. Verite measured four samples around the playground that exceeded the 100 ppm threshold, including 1,060 ppm and 603 ppm readings near Easton’s swing set.

The soil cover at Markey was more extensive than in other remediations, stretching across much of the park’s playground and shaded picnic area. But Verite’s testing found high levels of lead in the remediated area, including two samples above 200 ppm and one just above 400 ppm.

“That’s kind of shocking,” Copeland said. “At Markey, the kids play everywhere, and in the sandy areas, they really dig down. I’ve seen holes going almost three feet down, like they’re playing at a beach. They could be getting into contaminated soil and distributing it around.”

Mielke was surprised to learn that the remediation results were far more limited than he recommended. He was blunt in his assessment of the work.

“They worked on too small an area, and they should have been using … large amounts of soil and covering over large areas,” he said.

Hess, a New Orleans native who recently moved to Colorado, said failing to deliver on projects is all too common in New Orleans, a city infamous for chronic dysfunction and mismanagement.

“It’s so sad to have done such a shit job,” she said. “But that’s so New Orleans. I’m sorry. I don’t live there anymore, but it still makes me sad.”

A roadmap for cleanup?

Barabino, the recreation district CEO, said he would share Verite’s results with city project managers and MMG.

“It’s definitely concerning if it’s at the level that’s considered a true risk of threat, and we would get it to (the) capital projects (administration) immediately to get MMG out there, so we could take the steps needed to remediate and make those areas and grounds safe for our kids and families to use,” Barabino said.

Filippelli said the city should conduct comprehensive testing of every park and do regular checkups. But because lead contamination in New Orleans parks is extensive and city leaders are struggling to close a large budget deficit, Filippelli recommends that the city remediate the worst parks first.

He and Mielke don’t believe the city must take the route of full remediation, which involves digging up lead-tainted soil and trucking it to a hazardous-waste landfill. That’s very costly and is usually unnecessary if a park is properly capped with clean soil, Filippelli said.

Verite obtained cost estimates for 10 of the 13 parks targeted for remediation in 2011. The total cost was $83,000 in 2011, or about $120,000 today. The work covered more than 1.3 acres across the 10 properties. Compared with similar remediation efforts described by Mielke and Filippelli, the city’s remediation efforts were very expensive. Filippelli estimates that similar work can be done for about $20,000 per acre — about a fifth of what was spent to remediate just over an acre at New Orleans parks.

Evans, Markey and many other parks with high lead levels have about an acre of open soil or grass that could be capped for about $20,000. Some parks with the biggest lead problems are the smallest in size. Soraporu Park, which scored the second-highest lead levels in Verite’s testing, would need about a half-acre of coverage. Union and Brignac parks, each less than a quarter acre, could be capped for about $5,000, according to Filippelli’s rough estimates.

Remediation should be coupled with efforts to reduce contamination from nearby sources, primarily old houses, Rabito said.

“When you clean up soil, you’re not going to do it much good if you haven’t identified what’s contaminating the soil,” she said. In many cases of recontamination, the culprit was a nearby house that was shedding lead paint.

“Which means the soil was clean for a hot minute before it got recontaminated,” she said. “So, we need to make sure that those homes are cleaned up and maintained in a lead-safe way.”

Cleaning up New Orleans parks will also likely require sustained public pressure, said the parents involved with the lead issue in 2011.

“I was not intending to kick butts or make anybody look bad,” said Copeland of her efforts to alert parents about the dangers at Markey. “But nothing would have happened unless all these parents were calling in to the city.”

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The full panel of judges on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday in a case that could require Louisiana public schools to feature posters with the Ten Commandments in every classroom.

Attorney Liz Murrill sought a rehearing with all 17 judges from the 5th Circuit after a three-judge panel ruled in June that the 2024 state law requiring the displays was “plainly unconstitutional.” A group of parents of public school students had filed a lawsuit against the state to block the law, which includes the text of a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments, from being enforced.

The case, Roake v. Brumley, could hinge on whether the law violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits governments from endorsing a specific religion. Whether a comparable law in Texas takes effect will likely depend on the outcome of the Louisiana case.

The plaintiffs in the case are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Judges grilled their lawyers with questions about basing their arguments on the long-standing precedent from the case Stone v. Graham, a 1980 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned a similar law in Kentucky. Justices decided then that the First Amendment bars public schools from posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

Some 5th Circuit judges said they believe the Stone decision was effectively nullified because it relied on a precedent from the 1971 case Lemon v. Kurtzman, which the Supreme Court overturned in 2022. The so-called Lemon test has been applied for five decades to decide what amounts to a violation of the Establishment Clause.

The 2022 case, Kennedy v. Bremerton, involved a Washington state high school football coach who was fired for praying at midfield after games and allowing students to join him. Joseph Kennedy got his job back after conservative justices prevailed in a 6-3 decision, saying the post game prayers do not amount to a school endorsement of Christianity.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs told the 5th Circuit judges that the Kennedy decision might have overturned Lemon but did not nullify the Stone ruling. Still, some judges questioned how an 11-inch by 14-inch poster amounts to coercion of religious beliefs.

In a news conference after the nearly two-hour hearing, Murrill expressed confidence in the state’s arguments but predicted the case is likely headed to the Supreme Court regardless of the 5th Circuit’s decision.

“We believe that you can apply this law constitutionally,” Murrill said.

Gov. Jeff Landry, who attended Tuesday’s hearing, called the Ten Commandments one of the nation’s foundational documents.

“I think Americans are just tired of the hypocrisy,” Landry said. “I just think that it’s high time that we embrace what tradition and heritage is in this country, and I agree with the attorney general. I like our chances.”

The Rev. Jeff Sims, one of the plaintiffs and a Presbyterian minister in Covington, issued a statement after the hearing saying he wants to be the one to decide on the religious education that his children receive.

“I send my children to public school to learn math, English, science, art, and so much more — but not to be evangelized by the state into its chosen religion,” Sims said. “These religious displays send a message to my children and other students that people of some religious denominations are superior to others. This is religious favoritism and it’s not only dangerous, but runs counter to my Presbyterian values of inclusion and equality.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

NEW ORLEANS — A decade of court oversight of special education services in New Orleans public schools, the result of a legal settlement, will most likely cease by the end of the year, the judge presiding over the legal settlement said Wednesday.

The decision, if it comes to pass, would come at the request of the Louisiana Department of Education and the Orleans Parish School Board, which have been subjected to intensive monitoring under a . The agreement settled a 2010 class-action lawsuit that alleged the city’s charter schools discriminated against special education students in their application processes and did not provide them appropriate educational services, as federal law requires.

The case was brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of parents and guardians of special-needs students in New Orleans schools. Though problems with special education continue to be identified at some New Orleans charter schools, the consent decree was intended to address systemic issues — whether the state and district are catching those issues and implementing plans to correct them — not individual students’ experiences, said U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey.

For the past eight years, an independent monitor assigned by the court has found the defendants — the Department of Education and OPSB — in substantial compliance with all provisions outlined in consent decree. Citing those findings, the state and school board earlier this year an end to the agreement.

The plaintiffs , arguing that the state and NOLA Public Schools district have not created sufficient monitoring, oversight or complaint systems. Their opposition hinges on a 2024 from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor that found faults in the state’s monitoring of special education programs — most districts self-reported their compliance with federal rules dictating education plans, without on-site monitoring. (However, some of those problems resulted from the fact that much of the state’s monitoring capacity has been directed toward New Orleans schools, possibly as a result of the consent decree, .) The audit also noted that the agency reduced the number of workers dedicated to special education between 2012 and 2019.

Lauren Winkler, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said her team has asked the district to make it easier for parents to bring issues about schools forward to the central office through creating an open complaint system on their website. That was never implemented.

“[There are] really simple solutions that are not super costly,” Winkler said. “We tried to meet with them to agree to some and they just wouldn’t.”

Winkler said noncompliance still exists in the schools. More than people contacted the Southern Poverty Law Center about their negative experiences with New Orleans schools’ special education programs ahead of this week’s hearing.

“If we didn’t have any parents coming forward with issues, we’d maybe have a different position,” Winkler said. “With the breadth of issues in the amount of people that came to us, as we’ve been preparing for this, I think that’s indicative of the systemic issues that are still here.”

But in a , Zainey wrote that the court anticipates ending federal oversight by the end of the year.

“The consent judgement was a temporary measure and was never meant to be a permanent fixture of the school system,” Zainey said in court. “Things have been much improved from how they used to be in Orleans Parish.”

Zainey invited parents to share their experiences with the court and representatives from the Louisiana Department of Education and Orleans Parish School Board during informal hearings on Nov. 12 and 13. Most parents asked the court to continue the federal monitoring of New Orleans schools, but it’s unclear whether their statements will change Zainey’s plans. Zainey encouraged the state’s ombudsman, who connects families with resources and informs them of their rights in relation to special education, to connect with parents following their statements.

But most of the parents speaking at the informal hearing were those who had already tried, and were still trying, to seek recourse through communication with district or state officials.

Grace Thompson spoke in front of the judge Wednesday morning about her son’s experience at Audubon Gentilly. According to Thompson, her son was supposed to receive speech therapy and a one-on-one aide to help in class, but never received them. Thompson said she’s tried to seek help through the district’s accountability office, which, she said, has offered little guidance and has been “slow” and “inconsistent” in its communications.

“I’ve literally been calling them for the last year and a half,” Thompson told the judge. “They know who I am.”

Steve Corbett, CEO of Audubon Schools, said Audubon Gentilly has provided students with all necessary services and has been found fully compliant with federal special education law. The most recent state special education found “no unresolved areas of noncompliance” at the school.

Other parents also spoke of slow communication with the district and the schools their children attend. They said their children weren’t receiving the services outlined in their individualized education plans, that their learning has regressed, that schools were slow in performing evaluations and reevaluations, and that oversight was only afforded to children with parents that could be there to actively fight for them.

District Superintendent Fateama Fulmore and state representatives were present at the hearing. In response to hearing parent concerns, Fulmore said she appreciated the opportunity to hear from them directly and that her team will follow up.

“We have an obligation to every child in this system to get this right,” Fulmore said. “We are doing better.”

Lyric Lee, a former student at Morris Jeff Community School who had an Individualized Education Program and graduated last year, said she learned at a young age how to advocate for herself, her brother and other students who have special needs. She said the consent decree should continue.

“I’ve learned when people are not kept on a watch, they feel like they don’t have to do it, and they’ll do everything possible to make sure they don’t have to,” Lee said.

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Some Head Start providers in Louisiana have taken out loans to keep operating if the government shutdown stretches into its second month.

At least two organizations — in the Lafayette area and in New Orleans — are supposed to receive funding through the federal early-learning program for low-income families on Nov. 1. That money won’t be distributed if the government remains closed.

Local programs are funded annually, but grants are renewed on different timelines, so the shutdown won’t be felt equally across the state and country.

Nationally, 134 centers serving more than 65,000 kids will run out of federal funds at the end of the month, according to the National Head Start Association.

More than 18,000 kids participate in Head Start programs in Louisiana, though only about 1,300 would be impacted on Nov. 1.

In Alabama, fewer than 1,000 children would be affected, and none in Mississippi. The states hardest hit next month include Florida, Georgia, Missouri, and Ohio.

Prime Time serves approximately 635 kids across four locations in the Lafayette area. Clover, formerly Kingsley House, enrolls about 700 children ages 6 weeks to 5 years in New Orleans.

approved a $650,000 loan to Prime Time, its subsidiary, earlier this month, to maintain services through November. LEH is “planning ahead for Dec. 1, the next critical date if the shutdown continues,” the head of both organizations, Miranda Restovic, said in a .

Clover has a line of credit to cover its expenses next month, its spokesperson, Sabrina Written, said, but couldn’t comment on funding beyond that.

Yolanda Motley, Clover’s head of early learning, said this is the first time the organization has had to take out a line of credit in its more than 100-year history.

“This is a very different time for all of us,” Motley said. “We are in a dire situation.”

They have enough money to operate through November with “just the basics,” she said. That means no field trips, festivities, staff travel or professional development.

If the shutdown lasts, Motley said she doesn’t know if Clover can keep providing services into December.

“We need the shutdown to end,” she said. “There are children who won’t have access to learning. They get three meals a day… our families won’t be able to go to work. It’s gonna be a ripple effect.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

This question has been at the heart of education policy debates for decades. Federal law requires states to not only look at a school’s overall results, but to make sure that no group of students is “left behind.” This policy is grounded in a long history of schools giving Black students, Hispanic students and children with disabilities an education that was inferior to that offered to white and non-disabled peers.

But subdividing students in this way hasn’t proven as transformative as federal policymakers might have wished. Over the last decade, for example, scores have been declining overall, but especially for low-performing students. Those trends cross all racial and ethnic groups and apply to differences across income levels, for students with and without disabilities, and for native and non-native English speakers. 

Unfortunately, publicly available data are not well suited to looking specifically at the performance of lower-performing students within schools, so I asked a related one: Are there schools that are doing an excellent job with one group of students while neglecting others? 

To unpack this question, I turned to data from the state of Louisiana. Not only have students there done quite well in recent years, Louisiana is also one of the few states that calculates A-F grades both for overall schools and for individual student groups within those schools.

I started by looking at family income. Could a Louisiana school could somehow earn a high overall rating if its low-income students were not doing well?

The answer is no.

Of course, a perfect apples-to-apples comparison would compare economically disadvantaged students with wealthier peers, not the overall student body. That wasn’t possible with the publicly available Louisiana data.

Next, I looked at gaps between Black and white kids. The story wasn’t quite as clear as the one around income, but there was only one school that got an F for Black students and an A for white students, and just six schools earned a D for Black students and an A for white students.

Sadly, there were no schools where low-income students earned a higher grade than their more affluent classmates, and only five schools where the Black student group earned a higher grade than their white peers. Statewide, Black students performed worse than white students and low-income students performed worse than wealthier students. But those aggregate totals may suggest different problems than individual schools ignoring some of their students.

Now, this is just one state and one year’s worth of data, but from the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research came to similar conclusions. It looked at whether districts contributed to academic mobility — essentially, did students in some districts improve faster than their peers in other districts. After looking at data for nearly 3 million students across seven states, the authors concluded that, “low-performing students experience the largest performance gains when attending districts where students generally excel.”

The lesson for state policymakers is not that they should just trust these generalities and stop collecting disaggregated data. That would be a mistake, since they would never know if within-school gaps did emerge.

Moreover, carefully constructed rules could flag the small subset of schools that do have gaps. For instance, a Louisiana school cannot receive an A grade overall if one of its subgroups is low-performing for two consecutive years. (That caught one school last year with a low-performing English learner subgroup.) Virginia passed an even stronger last year requiring that any school with a low-performing subgroup automatically will have its overall rating downgraded by one level. These are useful back-end checks.

More directly, a handful of states, including Louisiana, Florida and Mississippi, each have accountability systems that give schools points based on the academic growth of their lowest-performing students. Given the national trends where performance has fallen further among these children, more states should consider such measures.

While policymakers can take some heart in knowing that good schools tend to be consistently good across student groups, the flip side is also true: Bad schools tend to be bad for everyone, and state policymakers should focus more on district-level performance issues than within-school gaps.

Ultimately, for school leaders, the priority should be providing a consistently solid education.

Disclosure: Chad Aldeman worked as a consultant for the Virginia Department of Education on the accountability regulations mentioned in the piece. 

Two decades after Hurricane Katrina, the legacy of New Orleans’ radical education experiment is still contested. Was it a success? The final episode of Where the Schools Went grapples with this question head on.

Doug Harris, chair of Tulane University’s Department of Economics and founding director of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, has led the team studying the city’s schools for years. Their findings show both real progress and persistent gaps: higher graduation rates, more students going to college, stronger test scores, but uneven results and questions about whether the momentum can last. 

We talk with Doug about how to make sense of this data and what lessons other cities might take from it:

But of course, data can only go so far. In the second half of this episode, we return to voices you’ve heard from throughout Where the Schools Went to test those findings. 

Chris Stewart reflects on how New Orleans became the center of a national fight over education policy, with critics and champions battling on social media and in statehouses over whether the “system of schools” model would spread. 

Former principal and school founder Alexina Medley, who led a school both before and after Katrina, describes her pride in how far the city has come, but also cautions that the impact of COVID means it now faces a new crossroads. 

Dana Peterson, CEO of New Schools for New Orleans, calls accountability the city’s greatest legacy while cautioning that progress should not be mistaken for success. 

And John White, the former state superintendent, argues that the deepest lesson is about the importance of coherence and its ability to empower educators, hold them to clear standards, and resource schools fairly.

Finally, I share some of my own reflections. As a veteran of the education wars who left school leadership burned out, I found that reporting for this series helped me to reconnect with the purpose of schools and the people who run them. This story, and the city of New Orleans more broadly, offers a lesson not only in how to build better schools, but also in how to practice a better kind of politics.

Listen to the final episode above. 

Where the Schools Went is a five-part podcast series from The Branch, produced in partnership with The 74 and MeidasTouch. Listen at or .

During that time, he made national headlines for changing the state’s school accountability system, for steering the conversion of virtually all New Orleans schools to charters and for defending Louisiana’s then-small voucher program from pushback by President Barack Obama’s administration. 

He also dug in in less sexy arenas, making changes to teacher training, improving — often amid vociferous opposition — standardized assessments and surviving demands from governors of both parties that he act more politically and less pragmatically. 

Less than a month after White’s far-ranging 2020 conversation with The 74, the world changed dramatically. As he was clearing out his desk, COVID-19 forced the shutdown of schools everywhere, throwing up hurdles unforeseen even in a state where school is regularly interrupted by disasters. 

Today, White is the CEO of Great Minds, which makes some of the curricula he championed as state superintendent, taking a carrot-and-stick approach to getting schools to adopt evidence-based classroom materials.  

On the 20^th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, with seemingly everyone in education policy circles taking a fresh look back at the school reforms undertaken by White and his colleagues, we asked to revisit his exit interview. 

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

When last you and I spoke, as you were wrapping a decade focused on improving schools throughout Louisiana, you talked about changes needed to enable students everywhere to flourish. One of the things you called for were stronger child and family policies. Update us. 

We’ve been working on those issues in New Orleans, and there’s evidence of some success. But on some of those issues, there hasn’t been a lot of progress — not just in New Orleans, but across the country. There are some obvious concerns posed in the new environment.

You could argue that that child and family policy is an issue of greater focal discussion today than it was 10 years ago, because there is a stronger and more prominent kind of division between the Republicans’ theories of family and community and the Democrats’ perspective on that than there was then. In that sense we can say, yes, there are promising signs of public attention.

On the other hand, I think you’d be hard pressed to argue that some of the essential momentum that was being achieved across the country — on access to child care, for example, the wages of child care workers and the quality of child care, Head Start and pre-kindergarten experiences —has taken quantum leaps forward.

There at least was an emerging consensus on the path toward public-private systems of regulated child care, Head Start and pre-kindergarten that has slowed. There have been moves to divest from some of those systems in recent years. And very serious conversations about divestment that are quite worrisome.

Those decisions would have had a serious impact on communities like New Orleans. I could point to plenty of positive indicators and a lot of progress in New Orleans and Louisiana. But there is some peril. There’s debate — which is good — but there’s some peril wrapped up in that debate these days in our country as well.

Can you point to a couple of successes? 

When you and I talked in 2020, we were just really getting off the ground the New Orleans Early Education Network, which had been started out of a local nonprofit, The Agenda for Children. It was an attempt to create a parish-level — county-level — model that provided financial support, professional learning support and a unified enrollment function across private pre-K, public pre-K, child care and Head Start centers. 

It’s a great example of a public-private partnership launched to exert a kind of soft governing power over a highly diverse sector of small businesses, non-governmental organizations and government-run centers, to the effect of providing more seats. It’s generated additional investment from the city taxpayers. It has really raised standards for care — especially for infants and toddlers, where very often the professional learning has been [missing from] the discussion.

There is something about a 20-year trajectory of going to a charter school system that’s very nimble and then discovering where there needs to be points of unification. This system allowed early childhood to move faster.

One of the extraordinary benefits of not having one single operator of all core education and care services from, let’s say ages 3 to 18, is that [in New Orleans] all operators of early childhood and K-12 services have to routinely justify their ability to continue to serve kids, because they’re on a contract.

Every child care center is rated and subject to an enrollment process, as is every school. That means parents might not choose it.

The school board isn’t operating every school and therefore can’t essentially assure that all schools, or all child cares and pre-kindergartens, remain in operation.

With that sometimes comes the [public] presentation of our struggles and frailties. That makes the system more open to critique because it’s doing more to lay bare its challenges. Every school has to come forward in front of a board and argue that it should continue its contract. That opens you to critique — a good thing in the public sector. 

It also makes you humble about your limitations and hungry for solutions. You’re not as a system constantly trying to protect your singular role as the one operator. You are adaptive because you recognize where there is need.

Maybe you’re willing to admit that schools aren’t always in the best position to solve some of those concerns. Among those are schools as providers of pre-natal, postnatal and child care services, schools as excellent providers of nutritional solutions, schools as providers of health solutions, schools as providers of post-secondary and career-driven solutions.

While New Orleans is very far from figuring out all [these] issues, it is germinating unconventional and promising solutions at a systemic level. For example, schools have said, We’re not going to do all the career and post-secondary pathway planning. We’re not expert in that. We’re going to have one center that is responsive to the local economy’s needs, that is responsive to the latest in career training for what is now literally thousands of young people who come from high school to go [to the ] every day. 

That approach has generated lots of private-sector involvement, including $35 million in the restoration of the [old] McDonough 35 High School building in the 7th Ward. It’s an example of where an unconventional approach led by a nonprofit has created the possibility of scale because of a humble admission on the part of schools that they needed help. 

New Orleans still has myriad challenges: an increasing English learner population and a population of kids traumatized from years of poverty, violence, family disruptions and man-made disasters. These are not easy things to solve at scale. New Orleans is still wrestling with how you incubate solutions.

But it’s an easier district with which to have conversations about challenges, because the presentation of facts is in the DNA of the system. The transparency and the vulnerability that comes with acknowledging areas of struggle is part of the deal.

Another item we talked about was your work to create state programs to identify high-quality instructional materials and encourage schools to use them. 

I recognized early on that the same tools are not present in many places as they are in New Orleans. Therefore, we needed the ability to achieve some scale and coherence in teaching and learning quality in classrooms beyond the 7% of kids that are from Orleans Parish. And more than standards and more than tests, curriculum was the road map we found.

It was the road map to kids getting a rich education every day, to us being able to define what we meant by excellent teaching and what we meant by the daily skills and experience and knowledge that a child should gather, more than standards were. And so our reforms across the state were really curriculum-based reforms.

I don’t think that efficacy in the classroom should ever be thought of, though, as just a function of the curriculum. It is the behavior of the teacher using the curriculum and the way that kids are organized and focused on using the curriculum that very much determines the efficacy.

Therein is the great challenge for the education product industry. One, how do you make yourselves equally accountable for student learning as the schools are? And two, what role do you play beyond just dropping off books and software licenses to help principals and teachers embody the promise of the curriculum?

What is your wish for the next 20 years?

Since the first day that the schools integrated in New Orleans, its education system has been on a protracted march toward achieving a basic civil right. Which is the guarantee that, given reasonable effort, all children will learn to read, write, do math and make friends in the schools of our city.

By most measures, New Orleans is doing better at that today than it was 20 years ago. So, one way of answering your question is that New Orleans will be a lot closer to that basic promise in 20 years.

But New Orleans is trying to achieve that civil rights mission in the context of really challenging conditions. When I say its population is poor and historically disadvantaged, it goes well beyond what most American cities experience.

It’s experienced challenges of violence, of prejudice and of disaster that very few cities have experienced. There is a sensitivity to issues of difference and of fairness in New Orleans that go way beyond the school system. Really into the fabric of the city. 

In 20 years, I would also hope it would be true not just that many, many more kids are reading, writing, doing math and making friends, but also that students who bring to the classroom unique and extraordinary needs will find schools that have the tools to immediately recognize those needs and to serve them, irrespective of how exceptional the needs are. 

These two goals are completely linked to one another. They’re not different projects. New Orleans is talked about in the first category — you know, did the randomized controlled trial or the quasi-experimental study indicate that there’s some level of progress in reading, yes or no?

But in fact, I think if you ask most school leaders, they would say that they’re equally involved in the second project, which is figuring out how to achieve that in the context of high levels of need — and a great diversity of need.

In New Orleans, we are uniquely positioned to do that not just because of the level of need, but because of this idea that schools are laying bare their challenges. The public can see them. It’s not cloaked the way it is in so many other places.

Is every child given a set of supports needed for them to thrive and to be positioned to achieve the first civil rights mission? That’s just as much a part of our project.

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans dismantled its public school system in a way no other American city had tried. Neighborhood zones disappeared. The elected school board was stripped of most authority. What emerged was a patchwork of independent charters with near-total autonomy. In the early years, there was energy and innovation, but also chaos. Families had to navigate dozens of separate enrollment processes. Students with disabilities could be turned away or underserved. Discipline practices meant that the city’s schools were ranked among the highest in the nation in suspensions and expulsion rates.

Over time, a new approach began to take shape. Leaders in the state-run Recovery School District started to ask which parts of a school system truly needed central oversight. Guided by principles of equity, accountability, and parent choice, they began to stitch together a more coherent structure. OneApp, a single citywide enrollment process, replaced the maze of school-by-school applications. A centralized expulsion system curbed abusive discipline practices.

Perhaps the most significant change came in special education. After a lawsuit from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the city overhauled how it identified and served students with disabilities. Funding was restructured so schools taking on the highest-need students received more resources. That shift made programs like Opportunities Academy possible, a groundbreaking school for young adults with intellectual disabilities that combines life skills classes with student-run businesses.

By the late 2010s, New Orleans had built a system that left most day-to-day decisions to schools but took a firm hand where fairness and access were at stake. Enrollment became more transparent. Suspension and expulsion rates dropped. Special education services improved dramatically.

In this episode of Where the Schools Went, we hear from the architects of these changes and the educators who made them work. Their story is not one of rebuilding the old district, but rather deciding which levers to pull, which to leave alone, and how to make the few things a system must do work uncommonly well.

Listen to episode four above, and watch for the final chapter debuting Sep. 9. 

Where the Schools Went is a five-part podcast series from The Branch, produced in partnership with The 74 and MeidasTouch. Listen at or .

Before Hurricane Katrina, teaching in New Orleans was more than a job. It was a pathway to the middle class; a profession led by veteran Black educators with deep roots in the city and protected by one of the South’s most powerful teachers’ unions. The United Teachers of New Orleans had fought for higher pay, stronger benefits, and job security. But those protections also made it hard to remove ineffective teachers and left principals with little control over who worked in their buildings.

After the storm, the entire teaching force was dismissed. More than 7,000 educators lost their jobs in a single stroke, many learning the news from the evening broadcast. 

The layoffs wiped out decades of experience and dealt a heavy blow to the city’s Black middle class. Some of those educators came back, determined to reopen their schools under extraordinary conditions. At Warren Easton Charter High School, staff taught on the second and third floors while the first floor remained under water. Still, the majority of dismissed educators never taught in the city again.

Into the gap came a wave of new recruits, many in their twenties, many white, and often from outside Louisiana. Programs like Teach For America promised energy and results. Principals could now hire quickly, replace teachers just as fast, and push for immediate improvement. 

Some schools thrived under the new flexibility. Others struggled with constant turnover and cultural gaps between teachers and the communities they served.

Today, the city’s teaching force is more diverse and more local than it was in the years after the storm. Yet a new challenge looms: how to attract and keep enough teachers willing to do the hard, often unglamorous work of helping students succeed. In the third episode of Where the Schools Went, you will hear from veteran educators, school leaders, and newcomers about how the city rebuilt its classrooms, what was gained, what was lost, and why the question of who teaches still shapes the future of its schools.

Listen to episode three above, and watch for the next chapter debuting Sep. 2. 

Where the Schools Went is a five-part podcast series from The Branch, produced in partnership with The 74 and MeidasTouch. Listen at or .

It’s “the amount of information that’s coming to you all at once,” said Jeremy Vidito, chief financial officer for the Detroit schools. On a , he laid out a litany of hardships, including figuring out “what’s true, what’s not. Emergency orders. Budget cuts.” 

Leaders felt similar uncertainty in the fall of 2020, when the pandemic forced them to scramble to educate, feed and transport students. But this time, as 47 million students return to school in the coming weeks, the source of the unease is the federal government. The Trump administration has already frozen and unfrozen education funds, and seeks to further reduce school spending. Vidito said he’s urging principals in his district to stay calm, but “a lot of the stuff, we can’t control.”

As Education Secretary Linda McMahon to schools across the country to spread her gospel of returning control to the states, leaders say they’re hoping for something simpler: a return to normalcy. 

“What is the next freeze, or what is the next issue that the administration may have with some of the funding that school districts get?” asked Mark Sullivan, superintendent of the Birmingham, Alabama, schools.

At a last month, McMahon offered “no guarantees” that she could prevent the kinds of “communication gaps” that led to previous dustups. Her comments came the same day that the Office for Management and Budget completed its unexpected review of several annual grant programs for schools. Officials said their initial inspection turned up expenditures at odds with Trump’s agenda — offering up, without elaboration, the use of school improvement funds on “a seminar on ‘queer resistance in the arts.’ ” 

But after seven months with Trump in office, some district leaders have grown cynical.

David Law, superintendent of the Minnetonka Public Schools in Minnesota, doubts there ever was a thorough analysis and suggested that the few examples cited were meant as a warning.

“I think the pause was intended to let people know, ‘We don’t like these things, so if you’re doing them, you should be worried,’ ” he said. As they try to prepare for additional shocks to their budget, leaders nationwide, he said, are adjusting to the pendulum swing over diversity, equity and inclusion. 

Under the Biden administration, “we were trying to prove we were caring about kids enough,” he said. “Now we’re trying to prove that we’re not meeting the definition of indoctrination. It’s a bit of a wild ride.”

‘Safe to speak’

For now, Congress Trump’s proposed cuts to K-12 funding. But OMB has still floated of a that would claw back unspent education funds from the current budget before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. Congress’ watchdog agency says that if the administration doesn’t give Congress ample time to approve or reject the cuts, the move would . 

In a , McMahon said funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act will flow with or without the Department of Education. 

But that the administration might cut some special education grants already awarded for research, technology, and teacher and parent training alarm district-level staff.

“A reduction in this funding will create challenges for districts and could lead to the need to re-evaluate essential programs that help to support students eligible for special education services,” said Jessica Saum, a special education coordinator in the Cabot Public School District, outside Little Rock, Arkansas. 

President Donald Trump has said that ensuring schools teach children English is the federal government’s only education-related obligation. But Vidito in Detroit said he’s still bracing for the elimination of funding for English learners. 

Federal officials stating that districts must take “affirmative steps to ensure” that English learners “can meaningfully participate in their educational programs and services.” The move expands on a from Attorney General Pam Bondi saying that despite the president’s executive order declaring English the official language, the government should “minimize non-essential multilingual services” and focus on assimilation.

The unpredictability of this moment has prompted Merica Clinkenbeard, who directs English learner programs for the Springfield, Missouri, district, to remind teachers that the federal money is supplemental: Teachers are responsible for ensuring students become proficient in English with or without it.

Due to the threat of federal funding cuts, she lost three members of her leadership team.

“They felt like perhaps they would not have jobs in this field ever again,” she said. Now she has two positions she can’t fill. “I was telling my husband, ‘This is just like COVID, like everything I’ve known is going away.’ ” 

Districts serving large English learner and immigrant populations are more cautious than most as students return this fall, especially after Immigration Customs and Enforcement officials an 18-year-old Los Angeles student last week while he was walking his dog. Officials said he had overstayed his visa by two years.

The fear of ICE raids has prompted more parents to ask about remote learning, said Sharon Balmer Cartagena, an attorney with Public Counsel, a nonprofit public interest law firm. She’s been holding “family preparedness” workshops for southern California districts, encouraging them to update emergency contact information in case a parent is deported. 

Los Angeles Unified is one district trying to by stationing volunteers, staff and campus police around school zones. But she expects enforcement actions to ramp up with the start of the school year. Even so, she encourages parents to send their children to school in person.

“We saw what happened during COVID with younger kids learning remotely,” she said. Students in the early grades as they would have in a classroom and experienced both academic, social and behavioral setbacks, studies show. Now, many of those students are in middle and high school.

“To have that hit them again would be really detrimental,” Cartagena said. “Some of them are just starting to catch up.” 

‘Doing it right’

Not all education leaders are dreading the next announcement from Washington. Louisiana Superintendent Cade Brumley welcomed McMahon to Baton Rouge Aug. 11, where she celebrated the state’s rising performance in reading. On the last National Assessment of Educational Progress, the state scored above the national average after trailing the rest of the country for years. 

McMahon also hit Arkansas, Tennessee and Florida last week, three more states that embrace the Trump administration’s plans to reduce federal education oversight. Since her confirmation, she has limited most of her school visits to charter and private schools, to emphasize the administration’s focus on expanding choice. But this tour is giving her more exposure to traditional district schools. 

“Louisiana is doing it right — and they don’t need the federal bureaucracy to make it happen,” McMahon after her visit to Jefferson Terrace Academy in East Baton Rouge. 

But the state did need federal money, specifically the COVID relief funds, Brumley said during the . 

“We were able to use those pandemic dollars around the academic efforts that we knew were best for students,” he said. He agrees with McMahon’s position that fewer strings tied to education funding will lead to stronger results. “We’re just really excited about … not having these excessive restrictions and bureaucratic needs surrounding dollars.”

Educators want assurances that the funding their students count on is stable, said Saum, in the Cabot district. Some students with disabilities require significant hands-on help from staff members. 

“Parents are following along,” she said “They want to know ‘Is my child going to get what they need to be safe and cared for at school?’ ”

With the formal title of “inclusion coordinator,” Saum said she has to be clear about her role at a time when the administration is trying to ban DEI-related programs. 

“It can be so divisive when people don’t really understand we’re talking about children with disabilities,” she said. Others with similar positions, she said, have changed their titles to emphasize “meaningful access.”

If anything, Law, from the Minnetonka district, said the administration’s “critical lens” on schools have forced leaders to be “crystal clear” about their work. During a recent visit to a nursing home, as part of his efforts to connect with members of the community, he said a resident told him, “You should be teaching all these kids English.”

“ ‘I have great news. The only thing we’re teaching these kids is English,’ ” Law said he told him. “There will always be people that say you don’t need to kowtow to certain populations. I’m still going to say public education is all students getting free education.” 

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans faced two urgent questions: Which schools would be rebuilt, and who would run them? In the Ninth Ward, few fights were as big as the one over George Washington Carver High School, a community anchor with deep history and proud traditions.

When the state chose Collegiate Academies, a high-performing charter network led mostly by people from outside of the city, the pushback was swift. Alumni rallied. Students staged a walkout during Collegiate Carver’s first year. The arguments weren’t primarily about academics, but about who gets to shape the future of a place like Carver, and whether a model built for results could ever feel like home to the people who had kept the school’s spirit alive. 

For many, the fight over Carver came to represent a larger fight over what kind of New Orleans would rise after the flood.

In time, the picture shifted. 

In this episode, you’ll hear from alumni, educators, and advocates about what can happen when people who once saw each other as opponents realize they’re fighting for the same thing. As Carver began pairing academic gains with a return to the traditions that had long defined the Green and Orange, something beautiful began to grow. “Episode Two: The Battle for Carver” traces that bumpy path and draws lessons that extend far beyond one school.

Listen to episode two above, and watch for the next chapter debuting on Aug. 26. 

Where the Schools Went is a five-part podcast series from The Branch, produced in partnership with The 74 and MeidasTouch. Listen at or .

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans in August 2005, it destroyed homes and flooded neighborhoods. Eighty percent of the city was submerged, 1,800 people were killed, and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. It also upended a public school system already collapsing under the weight of decades of failure. 

In the years that followed, the system was not just rebuilt; it was radically reimagined.

The debut installment of revisits the years leading up to the storm and the questions New Orleans was already grappling with. Crumbling buildings, failing academics, and deep corruption had eroded trust with the public — so much so that the FBI had even set up shop inside the school district’s central office. The below episode explores the question: What happens when a public institution fails the people it was built to serve? 

And what should come next?

We hear the story from the people who lived it, like former school district employee Ken Ducote, who used code names and classic cars to pass documents to the FBI. We learn about the students who had to leave school to use the bathroom at Taco Bell, because the ones in their building were constantly broken. And we meet the valedictorian who was barred from graduating after failing the math exit exam — for the fifth time.

In episode one, we talk about what loss really meant after the storm and the rituals and routines that helped bind communities together. We hear from a child who couldn’t find his mother for more than a month, a teacher who sheltered with her family in a room in a church basement and the students who, even in new classrooms in new cities, hid under desks every time it rained.

But this isn’t just a story about what was lost or broken. It’s about what people built in the aftermath. Just days after the storm, a team of New Orleans educators reunited with their students in Houston, many of them living in the Astrodome, and opened a school for them. This new campus quickly grew into a community for kids who had lost nearly everything in their lives.

The episode doesn’t settle the debate about what came next. But it begins to unpack the competing beliefs surrounding New Orleans’ post-Katrina school reforms. Some hail the transformation as miraculous, a turnaround that turned one of the nation’s worst-performing districts into a national model. Others view it as a betrayal: a dismantling of community control, the displacement of Black educators, and the erasure of local identity. This episode is the first of five chapters that will help you decide which, if any, of those narratives is correct.

Listen to episode one above, and watch for episode two debuting on Aug. 19. 

Where the Schools Went is a five-part podcast series from The Branch, produced in partnership with The 74 and MeidasTouch. Listen at or .

Between fall 2019 and fall 2023, public school enrollment fell from 50.8 million to 49.5 million, a loss of more than 1.2 million students, or 2.5%. The pandemic accelerated that decline, but enrollment was already falling in some grades and communities before COVID, and that trend is expected to continue: The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) projects overall enrollment will fall below 47 million by 2031.

Yet a FutureEd analysis based on data from NCES, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and other sources, finds that enrollment trends vary widely by race, grade level, geography and schools. That variation offers important insight into how the education landscape is shifting, where the challenges are most acute and what it means for the future of the public school system.

When COVID struck and public schools switched to virtual learning, some families began educating their children at home; others opted for private schools, many of which resumed in-person learning sooner than public schools.

Though many families eventually returned, by fall 2022, an were homeschooled, compared with — and . Private school enrollment also grew, reaching roughly 7 million in 2021, an estimated over pre-pandemic levels. Newly expanded school choice policies are likely to accelerate that shift: Sixteen states offer or intend to offer public funding for private school tuition to any student in the state. While these programs haven’t yet triggered a , they are likely to reshape some family preferences and expand the supply of private alternatives.

Still, family choices aren’t the sole or even primary driver of the decline. The U.S. birthrate has fallen steadily for more than a decade and is now —at — the lowest in history. Between 2010 and 2020, the number of children under 5 nationwide, from 20.2 million to 18.4 million. That shrinking pipeline is now reaching classrooms.

Historically, immigration has helped offset declining birth rates, but to sustain enrollment. Recent immigration crackdowns could further reduce student numbers.

Domestic migration is also reshaping enrollment patterns. High housing costs and taxes are driving families from urban areas and high-cost states like California. As a result, some regions are experiencing much steeper enrollment losses than others, while others are growing. 

The sharpest declines are seen among the youngest students. Between fall 2019 and 2023, kindergarten enrollment fell by 215,000 students — nearly 6%. Elementary schools overall lost about 865,000 students (4%), while middle school enrollment (grades 6–8) declined by nearly 700,000 (6%). The largest drop, 7%, was seen in sixth grade. High school enrollment increased slightly, rising 2%, or roughly 345,000 students. 

The trends also vary by race and ethnicity. White students account for the largest share of the overall decline, a loss of nearly 2 million kids between fall 2019 and 2023 — an 8% drop. Black enrollment fell by about 250,000 students, or 3%. These decreases pre-dated the pandemic but accelerated afterward. As of fall 2023, white student enrollment is down 13% from its 2014 level.

Meanwhile, Hispanic and Asian enrollment — long drivers of public school growth — continued to grow, but more slowly. Public schools added roughly 540,000 Hispanic students between fall 2019 and 2023 (a 4% increase), and about 72,000 Asian students (3%). In the five years before the pandemic, both groups were growing at closer to 8% to 9%. These increases are no longer large enough to offset losses among white and Black students.

Enrollment declined in 41 states between fall 2019 and 2023, ranging from 0.3% in Louisiana to 6.5% in Hawaii. Thirteen states lost at least 5% of their students. California saw the largest decrease: 325,000 students (5%). In total, 29 states had fewer public school students in fall 2023 than they did in 2014 — and 23 states are projected to lose at least another 5% by 2030. West Virginia is expected to see the steepest proportional decline, at 18% (45,000 students), and California projected to lose the most students at 500,000 (8%).

At the same time, 10 states, mostly in the South and Midwest, with lower overall tax burdens, saw enrollment growth between fall 2019 and 2023.

Within states, urban districts, which had been growing before the pandemic, saw the steepest post-pandemic declines, losing some 675,000 students, or about 4%. Rural, suburban and town-based districts also lost students, though these decreases were more modest in comparison, around 1% to 2%.

In California, for example, urban districts accounted for much of the state’s overall decline, losing 180,000 students between fall 2019 and 2023. Los Angeles Unified School District lost the most students, 63,000 (13%), while Santa Ana Unified School District experienced a 17% decline (about 7,500).

Even within districts, the impact varies. In Los Angeles Unified, high-poverty schools lost an average of 15% of their enrollment, versus a 10% decline at schools with fewer low-income students. And nationwide, public charter school enrollment has grown from 2.7 million in fall 2014 to 3.4 million in fall 2019 and 3.7 million in fall 2022, the most recent .

So what are the consequences?

In most states, public school funding is directly tied to enrollment. When students leave, or never enroll, schools lose per-pupil state dollars, which typically account for around of their budgets. Federal COVID relief funds temporarily masked the strain, but with that money now expired, many schools are feeling the pressure. 

As budgets tighten, students often bear the consequences. Under-resourced schools may cut arts programs, electives and extracurriculars, or eliminate counselors, librarians and mental health professionals. With fewer students, schools also need fewer teachers, prompting layoffs that ripple through schools and local economies. And when enrollment drops sharply, course offerings inevitably shrink. Schools can’t sustain multiple Advanced Placement classes, foreign language courses or sports teams if buildings are only half full. 

Eventually, under-enrolled schools may be closed, which can disrupt students, displace staff and erode community life. Between 2019 and 2024, for example, West Virginia, where enrollment is down 12% from 2014, shut 53 of its more than 600 schools due to declining enrollment. In rural areas, closures can be particularly disruptive; shuttering a small town’s only school might mean the next nearest option is an hour’s bus ride away. In all cases, students must be reassigned, which brings its own challenges and added costs to the neighboring schools. And when a school closes, it’s not just students who are affected — teachers, janitors, cafeteria workers and other staff often lose their jobs, deepening the impact on the broader community.

Today’s enrollment declines don’t seem like a temporary disruption, and districts are going to have to deal with this new reality. That doesn’t always mean closing schools, but ignoring the inefficiencies of under-enrolled buildings isn’t sustainable. Georgetown University’s EdunomicsLab ways of keeping small schools open, such as sharing staff across buildings or leasing out unused space. 

There is no one-size-fits-all solution. But as enrollment patterns continue to change, school districts will need to respond by balancing fiscal responsibility with community needs, all while ensuring that fewer students doesn’t mean fewer opportunities.

The two new Texas laws are part of a broader push this year as Republican lawmakers in pursue bills that bolster the presence of religion in public schools — legislation critics contend violates the Constitution. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” or favor one over another. Proponents of the policies in Texas and other conservative states have framed the laws as a matter of religious freedom and believe the Supreme Court is on their side. 

On the same day Abbott took those steps to legislate religion in public schools, a federal appeals court in New Orleans found a similar law requiring Ten Commandments displays in Louisiana classrooms was unconstitutional.

In Texas, and throughout the South in particular, the new laws have garnered overwhelming support from the public, the shows. While 52% of adults nationally said they favor allowing teachers to lead prayers that refer to Jesus, 81% felt that way in Mississippi and 61% did in Texas. In the Lone Star State, 38% of adults opposed having teachers lead Christian prayer. 

The latest results are “a lot higher than what we’re used to seeing” among Americans who “want to see the end of church-state separation or public displays [of the Ten Commandments],” Chip Rotolo, a research associate at Pew focused on religion, told The 74. 

Views on Christian prayers in public school, by state

% who say they oppose/favor allowing public school teachers to lead their classes in prayers that refer to Jesus

Note: The blue and orange bars show the confidence intervals around each estimate at a 95% confidence level. In the 16 states with unbolded names, the shares saying they favor and saying they oppose Christian prayers in public schools are not significantly different.
Source: Religious Landscape Study of U.S. adults conducted July 17, 2023-March 4, 2024

Jonathan Covey, the policy director at the nonprofit lobbying group Texas Values, told The 74 he wasn’t surprised by the survey results as people turn to religion as an “opportunity for moral clarity” and to find “comfort and encouragement in difficult times.” 

“The country wanting to see the involvement of religion in civic society, that has been a good thing, and we’ve seen that the Supreme Court has said that the Establishment Clause doesn’t demand a strict government neutrality towards religion,” Covey said. “Actually to the contrary, it’s always been understood that religion has a place in American civic society.”

Texas Values lobbied the state legislature to get the new laws across the finish line. One requires a 16-by-20-inch poster of the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom statewide. The second allows public schools to provide students and educators time during the school day to pray or read the Bible or other religious texts.  

Jonathan Saenz, the group’s president, called the new Ten Commandments requirement “a Texas-sized blessing,” noting in a statement that it “stands shoulder to shoulder with partner organizations” and is prepared to fight “against any court challenges brought against it.”  

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit that opposes government policies intertwined with religion, over the Texas law requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms. The group has against a similar Arkansas requirement signed into law in April. In that lawsuit, seven Arkansas families with children in public schools — and who identify as Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, Humanist, agnostic, atheist and nonreligious — allege the law imposes one religious perspective on all students. 

Meanwhile, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, considered among the nation’s most conservative, issued blocking Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law. The judges found the requirement to install a Protestant version of the commandments violated the Establishment Clause. 

Constitutional attorney Andrew Seidel, who serves as vice president of strategic communications at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the Fifth Circuit’s ruling made clear that “the separation of church and state is the best protection for religious freedom that we have.”

“These Ten Commandments displays are meant to tell the viewer — the captive kindergartener or third grader or seventh grader — which God is approved by the government, which God to pray to, which religion is correct,” Seidel told The 74. “That is inappropriate for a public school classroom, as inappropriate as it is clear that that tells the Buddhist students that they’re wrong, the Muslim kid that their religion is false, the Hindu child that their gods are fallacious, and the non-religious and atheist and agnostic kids are told by the state they’re misguided.” 

Religion is partisan

Results from the Pew study reflect a political split on support for the separation of church and state. Opposition to teacher-led prayer at school was strongest in Democratic strongholds like Massachusetts and California and highest in Washington, D.C., at 69%. Across 22 states, majorities of adults supported school prayers led by teachers. Opponents were in the majority in 12 states and the District of Columbia, and in 16 states, the share of respondents who supported school prayer was not statistically different from those in opposition. The nationally representative survey of nearly 37,000 U.S. adults, taken between July 2023 and March 2024, has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.8 percentage points. 

Rotolo, the Pew research associate, said he found the regional patterns particularly interesting. While support was strongest in the South, “you see right down the whole West Coast, most people oppose seeing Christian prayer in school.”

Pew , when 46% of adults said teachers should not be allowed to lead students in any kinds of prayers, a practice that saw support at the time from just 30% of respondents. However, 23% said they had no opinion on the issue. The latest survey didn’t give respondents an opportunity to choose “neither.” 

“Just by posing the question differently, we actually see some different results,” Rotolo said, acknowledging that the change could also reflect a shift in public opinion over the last four years. It’s also possible that some respondents who said they support school prayer in the recent survey “may not have particularly strong opinions about this” and may have chosen “neither” if given the option. 

Rotolo said the favorability of teacher-led prayer in public schools was dominant among Republicans, at 70%.  Just 34% of Democrats were in support. Older Americans were also significantly more likely to allow educator-led prayers in schools than recent high school students. 

Support also varied drastically between racial groups. Among Black respondents, 67% supported teacher-led prayer compared to 50% of white adults. Just 36% of Asian Americans were in favor. 

Seidel, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said he wasn’t particularly surprised to see the Pew survey results, in part because it reflects a “coordinated assault on the separation of church and state right now” amid attempts by lawmakers across the country “to promote Christian nationalism.” 

“Those folks in the minority, whether it be religion or nonreligious, are the biggest supporters of separation of church and state because they know what it is to have a government impose their religion on them,” Seidel said.

Meanwhile in 2023, in the nation to allow school districts to hire religiously affiliated chaplains to provide counseling services to students. As of April, has hired a full-time religious chaplain while more than two dozen others have opted out of the measure. In 2021, Texas lawmakers required schools to display any “In God We Trust” signs donated to them by private organizations, and in 2024, the State Board of Education that relies heavily on biblical teachings. 

The efforts to bolster religion in schools, including in Texas and Louisiana, could again appear before the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority. In 1980, the high court be displayed in classrooms, finding the displays served no secular purpose and ran afoul of the First Amendment. 

This time, Republican lawmakers are banking on a more favorable court makeup. In 2022, the Supreme Court found the First Amendment protected a Washington high school football on the field after games. Last month, an evenly divided Supreme Court blocked the opening of a religious charter school in Oklahoma, which would have been the nation’s first. If Justice Amy Coney Barrett had not recused herself in that case, some believe there would have been a majority permitting the school.

Covey, of the nonprofit Texas Values, said recent Supreme Court opinions have begun to abandon the 1980 opinion against the Ten Commandments displays in Kentucky schools. The court’s opinion upholding the Washington football coach’s right to pray on the field, he said, was “the nail in the coffin.” 

President Donald Trump and his administration have called it the “Great American Comeback.” But environmental advocates say the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s reversing course on enforcing air and water pollution laws is more of a throwback — one that will exacerbate health risks for children who live and study in the shadows of petrochemical facilities. 

The  has found that children face special risks from air pollution because their airways are smaller and still developing and because they breathe more rapidly and inhale more air relative to their size than do adults.

Environmental lawyers say Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s slashing of federal protections against toxic emissions could lead to increased exposure to dangerous pollutants for kids living in fenceline communities.

Community advocates like Kaitlyn Joshua, who was born and raised in the southeast corridor of Louisiana dubbed “Cancer Alley,” say they are horrified about what EPA’s deregulation push will mean for the future generation.  

“That is not an exaggeration; we feel like we are suffocating without the cover and the oversight of the EPA,” Joshua said. “Without that, what can we really do? How can we really save ourselves? How can we really save our communities?” 

Ashley Gaignard knows how hard it is to keep kids safe when pollution is all around. 

When Gaignard’s son was in elementary school, a doctor restricted him from daily recess, saying the emissions from an ammonia facility located within 2 miles of his playground could be exacerbating a pre-existing lung condition, triggering severe asthma attacks. 

“I had asthma as a kid growing up, and my grandfather had asthma, so I just figured it was hereditary; he was going to suffer with asthma,” said Gaignard, who was born and raised in Louisiana’s Ascension Parish, also located within Cancer Alley. She’s now chief executive officer of the community advocacy group she created, . 

“I just never knew until the doctor said, ‘OK, we have to think about what he is breathing, and what’s causing him to flare up the minute he’s outside’,” she said. 

Gaignard said the further her son got away from that school, as he moved through the parish’s educational system, the less severe his attacks were. She said he’s now an adult living in Fresno, California — and no longer suffers from asthma.

New EPA head announces rollbacks

Zeldin sent shockwaves throughout the environmental justice sector on March 12 when he  that the EPA was rolling back many of the federal regulations that were put in place under the administration of Joe Biden — many built around environmental justice and mitigating climate change. 

Those included  the Clean Air Act by implementing more stringent controls on toxic air emissions and increased air quality monitoring in communities near industrial facilities. The new standards were expected to reduce 6,000 tons of air toxins annually and reduce the emissions related to cancer risks in communities in Texas, Louisiana, Delaware, New Jersey, the Ohio River Valley and elsewhere. 

A new  from the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, which serves as the law enforcement arm of the EPA — circulated the same day as Zeldin’s announcement — states that environmental justice considerations would no longer factor into the federal agency’s oversight of facilities in Black and brown communities. 

Zeldin said the goal was “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.”

That means the EPA will no longer target, investigate or address noncompliance issues at facilities emitting cancer-causing chemicals such as benzene, ethylene oxide and formaldehyde in the places already overburdened with hazardous pollution. 

“While enforcement and compliance assurance can continue to focus on areas with the highest levels of (hazardous air pollutants) affecting human health,” the memo reads, “…to ensure consistency with the President’s Executive Orders, they will no longer focus exclusively on communities selected by the regions as being ‘already highly burdened with pollution impacts.’”

The agency also will not implement any enforcement and compliance actions that could shut down energy production or power generation “absent an imminent and substantial threat to human health.” 

In its prepared  about the EPA’s deregulation measures, Zeldin said, “The agency is committed to fulfilling President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, lower cost of living for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, restore the rule of law, and give power back to states to make their own decisions. ”

Pollution ‘right in our backyards’

Top officials with the nonprofit environmental advocacy group Earthjustice recently said there is no way for the Trump administration to reconcile what it’s calling “the greatest day of deregulation” in EPA’s history with protecting public health. 

Patrice Simms, vice president of litigation for healthy communities for Earthjustice, went a step further pointing out during a press briefing that the reason EPA exists is to protect the public from toxic air pollution. 

“The law demands that EPA control these pollutants, and demands that EPA protect families and communities,” Simms said. “And these impacts on these communities most heavily land on the shoulders of children. Children are more susceptible to the harms from pollutants, and these pollutants are often happening right in the backyards of our schools, of our neighborhoods and our playgrounds.”

A 2016  published by the Center for Effective Government found that nearly one in 10 children in the country attends one of the 12,000 schools located within 1 mile of a chemical facility. These children are disproportionately children of color living in low-income areas, the report found. 

For the past several years, Joshua has been leading the opposition to a hydrogen and ammonia facility being built within 2,000 feet of an elementary school in Ascension Parish. Air Products plans to start commercial operation in 2028 where an estimated 600,000 metric tons of hydrogen will be produced annually from methane gas.

The $7 billion project has been touted as a clean energy solution because the company plans to collect its carbon dioxide emissions and transport them through pipelines to be stored under a recreational lake 37 miles away. 

Carbon capture technology has been , with skeptics highlighting the possibilities for earthquakes, groundwater contamination and CO2 leaking back into the atmosphere through abandoned and unplugged oil and gas wells or pipeline breaches. Pipeline ruptures in the past have also led to communities having to evacuate their homes. 

Environmental justice is new ‘civil rights movement’

Joshua said these communities need more federal regulation and oversight — not less.

“We had a community meeting … for our Ascension Parish residents, and the sentiment and the theme on that call was very much like ‘Kaitlyn, there is nothing we can do.’ Like, we just had to literally lie down and take this,” Joshua said. “We had to kind of challenge people and put them in the space, in time, of a civil rights movement. We have to get creative about how we’re going to organize around it and be our own version of EPA.”

Sarah Vogel, senior vice president of healthy communities with the Environmental Defense Fund, said the move toward deregulation comes as the U.S. Department of Justice announced on  that it was dropping the federal lawsuit the Biden administration lodged against Denka’s Performance Elastomer plant in Louisiana. That plant had been accused of worsening cancer risks for the residents in the surrounding majority-Black community. 

The DOJ said its decision was tied to Trump’s moves to ‘”end radical DEI programs” — federal programs tied to diversity, equity and inclusion.

“What they’re trying to do is just completely deregulate everything for oil and gas and petrochemical facilities, just absolutely take the lid off,” Vogel said. “We have long known that children are uniquely susceptible to air pollution and toxic chemicals. Like they’re huge, huge impacts. It’s why what they are doing is so devastating and cruel in my mind.”

This was originally published on .  is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.

The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results delivered a familiar gut punch: Just 30% of eighth graders read at or above the proficient level, a number that’s barely budged in decades. Even in states like Mississippi and Louisiana, which have earned national attention thanks to literacy reforms that have smartly lifted fourth-grade scores in recent NAEP cycles, early gains tend to plateau or evaporate by eighth grade. A substantial number of U.S. students simply seem to run out of gas as readers as they move from upper elementary to middle school and beyond. 

A compelling explanation may lie in something called the decoding threshold. Teachers often assume that once students master decoding in early elementary school, they’re set to shift from learning to read to reading to learn. However, in 2019, researchers at the Educational Testing Service published a that measured foundational literacy skills — like decoding — in students from upper elementary through high school. Most reading tests in the older grades focus solely on comprehension; they don’t offer much insight into whether students have mastered the basic skills necessary to read fluently. The findings showed evidence of a troubling phenomenon: Students with weak decoding skills consistently performed poorly on comprehension tasks, while those who surpassed a certain level of decoding ability tended to understand texts much more effectively. In other words, although decoding isn’t the only skill older students need to succeed in reading, those who haven’t yet mastered it are likely to struggle with understanding complex material.

A follow-up study three years later confirmed it: Those below the decoding threshold stagnated, while those above the line advanced — offering tantalizing evidence to explain why eighth-grade NAEP scores plateau even as fourth-grade numbers rise. A put the matter succinctly and starkly: “If children do not have adequate word-recognition skills, their reading comprehension often won’t get better no matter how much direct support for comprehension they receive.” 

The tripwire that appears to be holding kids back is multisyllabic decoding. Students who can decode simple words like “cat” and “bed” with relative ease may still struggle to break down longer, more complex words into smaller, manageable parts to read them correctly. Imagine two eighth graders reading a science passage that includes the word “photosynthesis.” The student above the decoding threshold effortlessly breaks it into “photo” and “synthesis,” adjusts the sounds in her head — like “syn” to “sin” — and reads it smoothly, quickly grasping it as a plant process she’s studying. Meanwhile, the student below the threshold freezes at the unfamiliar term and mangles it as “photo-sith-esis” or “photo-sy-thee-sis.” Struggling to decode the big word, he loses the thread of the sentence, missing the whole idea of plants making energy. 

It’s another manifestation of cognitive load theory: Brainpower spent decoding multisyllabic words is not available to attend to the meaning of the text. Worse, the decoding threshold fuels a rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer phenomenon often referred to as the : Students who are below the decoding threshold stop growing in vocabulary, reading comprehension and knowledge acquisition, while those who are above have what it takes to keep learning and growing, leaving the struggling readers in their wake. 

Worse still, evidence of the decoding threshold reveals a blind spot in common approaches to teaching reading. “We basically don’t teach [multisyllabic decoding] anywhere in the system because it’s too advanced for second graders. And after second grade, we stop decoding instruction and flip into comprehension and fluency,” observes Rebecca Kockler, a former Louisiana state education leader who now heads , a $40 million initiative of the . “If I had a magic wand, I would pull decoding fluency work up almost into seventh or eighth grade,” she says, while pushing down to early elementary grades the building blocks of multisyllabic decoding, such as morphology and etymology. If you teach kids to break words into their smallest meaningful pieces, like “un-” for “not” or “-ness” for a state of being, they’re more likely to be able to handle “unhappiness” by spotting its parts, for example. And by showing them where words come from — like how “photo” in “photosynthesis” means “light” from Greek — they will be better able to infer what words mean.

As persuasive as the decoding threshold thesis might be, the wish for a magic wand to wave at curriculum and standards hints at a serious problem: There is no immediate or obvious solution at hand to address the issue. Nor is there simply a lack of appropriate curriculum or materials. A recent RAND of teachers in grades 3 to 8 found that 44% of their students “always or nearly always experience difficulty” reading the content of their instructional materials. The report also found many of those same teachers hold misconceptions about how students develop word recognition skills.

A new nonprofit venture called , a collaborative effort with the fund led by Kockler, has been piloting a set of tech-enabled instructional tools aimed at addressing these issues directly. In a 12-week pilot in grades K-2 across 11 schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, early results were promising, with evidence of impact in only 8 to 12 weeks of use. Student growth was most pronounced, according to Kockler’s colleagues, among students starting at the lowest levels of proficiency. K-2 may sound early to address a problem that shows up starkly in eighth grade, but it reflects a growing conviction: unless students start building sophisticated decoding skills young, and those skills are reinforced often, too many will continue to hit the wall in middle school and never get back up to speed. “We’ve had this belief that we teach kids to read and then they read to learn,” Kockler explains, “and we just fundamentally do not believe that’s true anymore.” 

If you had asked her years ago, when she was assistant superintendent of academics with the Louisiana Department of Education, to estimate the percentage of middle schoolers who struggled with decoding to the point that it interfered with their reading comprehension, Kockler would have guessed 7% to 10%. “We think that number is more like 30% to 40%,” she now says, “which really mirrors this group of middle schoolers who never ever show growth on state tests or NAEP.” 

From community listening sessions to a plan for advertising the post, each step was standard operating procedure except one: An asterisk at the laying out a timeline stated that the board reserves the right to stop the process at any time and simply appoint someone. 

That note did little to quell concerns among leaders of the city’s schools — all but one of them independent public charter schools — who are still reeling from the fractious events that led up to the abrupt November departure of Avis Williams. The former superintendent resigned after a series of missteps that included an accounting error that obscured a deficit of at least $36 million.

Separately, district leaders have asked a court to enforce the terms of a $90 million settlement in a 2019 lawsuit filed against the city of New Orleans. The suit argues that the city illegally skimmed up to $150 million in taxes owed to schools. Among other things, at stake is an initial payment of $20 million, which district and board leaders planned to use to offset some of the $36 million budget shortfall. 

Williams became superintendent in the sixth year of New Orleans’s experiment as the nation’s only all-charter district. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the city had rebuilt its entire school system — at the time, one of the nation’s worst — into a totally new kind of system in which every school lived or died according to its performance contract. This autonomy-for-accountability bargain has led to , even as it remains controversial. 

A year ago, Williams — who had no prior experience with charter schools — mishandled a school closure, reversing her own decisions several times and leaving families scrambling to find alternatives. Critics argued the chaos was the result of her lack of understanding, two years into the job, of how NOLA Public Schools’ unique system worked. In the end, she solved the problems created by the botched process of revoking the charter of a failing school by replacing it with a traditional, district-run school — a move some board members had been pushing for. 

The challenges left unresolved — including the budget crisis, an overdue downsizing and longstanding problems with the district’s centralized enrollment system — will make the next superintendent’s job even more daunting, some members of the charter community say. They believe this makes it imperative that the next district leader is very familiar with the issues and the system’s capacity to address them.

Typically, the initial vetting of superintendent candidates is not done publicly. But two names circulating widely in New Orleans’s tight-knit education community potentially present a stark choice between a native of the city who helped to create the current system and a veteran administrator who was hired two years ago by Williams. 

The first, Sharon Clark, is a charter school network leader who played a prominent role in developing the city’s charter system and an elected member of the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. She is the principal of Sophie B. Wright High School, which had just become one of the city’s first charter schools when Hurricane Katrina hit. Clark was able to reopen the school within months, to serve the children of first responders. Last year, the high school earned a B overall on state report cards but an F for student performance on state exams. 

The second, NOLA Public Schools Interim Superintendent Fateama Fulmore, is a seasoned administrator who had little charter experience before being brought on by Williams two years ago. She has held top jobs in Omaha, Philadelphia and North Carolina, and last fall was a finalist for two other superintendencies. 

The members of the board that might or might not let the search play out have conflicting visions for the future of the school system. Some want the district to return to operating schools traditionally. Others are more concerned about downsizing and the financial crisis — uncovered last fall by charter finance officers — that threatens the schools’ ability to provide quality services. 

Board member Olin Parker has said Fulmore would be a very strong candidate to lead the district on a permanent basis. But Caroline Roemer, executive director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools, says Clark is a better pick, particularly given the urgent issues before the district. 

“We need someone with zero learning curve when it comes to relationships — community relationships, school relationships,” she says. “What is important now is to have someone from New Orleans.”

According to in The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate, most community members who attended a January public meeting told the board they wanted a native of the city who grasps the complexities of the district’s decentralized structure. 

Outside of people who have worked in the schools, precious few truly understand the unique nature of New Orleans’s system. The NOLA Public Schools leader’s powers are limited by state law, so the superintendency is not a job for a conventional leader looking to make a mark. There are also complicated racial legacies. 

All this makes filling the district’s top job a tall order.   

When Williams was appointed in 2022, she was given contradictory mandates by board members and failed, despite repeated entreaties, to forge relationships with the charter network leaders who have long worked with the district to troubleshoot common issues. 

By law, the district is constrained from dictating how individual schools educate students. So NOLA Public Schools leaders have fewer, but more distinct, responsibilities than administrators in typical districts. They distribute local, state and federal funds, which schools may spend as they see fit, and they monitor whether individual schools are performing well enough to merit renewal of their charter. 

When Williams was hired, she was asked to tackle an ambitious list of novel problems that included figuring out how to downsize the district in the face of declining enrollment — a process that necessarily would require the cooperation of charter operators. She also was charged with fixing a centralized system for matching students with schools and confronting rising absenteeism and mental health issues. 

From the start, the New Orleans education community questioned whether Williams could make progress without collaborating with people whom traditional superintendents view as subordinates. Most of her daunting to-do list remains unfinished. 

A year ago, after a series of missteps involving the expected revocation of the ​​Lafayette Academy Charter School’s permission to operate, Williams ceded to pressure from then-board vice president Leila Jacobs Eames to open a traditionally operated school in its place — something the superintendent had previously said the district was ill-equipped to do. 

During an October meeting with district administrators, a number of charter school finance leaders realized NOLA Public Schools had miscalculated the amount of tax revenue it was set to receive from the city by what would later turn out to be at least $36 million. Williams resigned in November.

A month later, the broadcast outlet , via a public records request, that the board had approved a $335,000 settlement with Williams, which both parties had agreed not to disclose to the public.  

The CEO of Crescent City Schools, Kate Mehok helps coordinate the School Leadership Forum, a network of charter operators who have long met regularly to hammer out solutions to common problems. Many of New Orleans’s most effective innovations were hatched by the network.

Mehok says school leaders have told board members that they would like to meet with the candidates. “We’re hoping they choose to do this so that it’s clear to whoever becomes the superintendent that we’re an important constituent group,” she says. “Our thoughts about it matter, so we have asked to be formally included in giving feedback to the board.” 

Dana Peterson, CEO of the school improvement and policy group New Schools for New Orleans, says he has told board members that they should spend time now clarifying what they want the next superintendent’s priorities to be. 

“Maybe [Williams] didn’t have the right set of experiences, maybe she didn’t have the right disposition towards our system,” he says. “But it was also true she was unclear on what direction the board wanted her to go on certain things.”

Applications for the position are open until March 16. Four days later, the board is scheduled to decide whether to interview any of the candidates. If finalists are selected and the process , public interviews could take place at board meetings over the following three weeks.

Testing constitutional limits, Republicans in at least 15 states have introduced legislation this year that would require the Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms.

GOP lawmakers are attempting to follow Louisiana, which last year became the first state in the country to have such a requirement in the modern era. That law is currently blocked in five public school districts as a lawsuit makes its way through the courts; other districts are expected to comply with the law.

The federal lawsuit argues that the law violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The case is likely heading to the U.S. Supreme Court. In December, 18 Republican state attorneys general supporting Louisiana’s law to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is currently hearing the case.

Republican state lawmakers also have introduced bills that would require prayer, Bible reading or chaplains in public schools.

The Ten Commandments are the basis of Judeo-Christian doctrine. In Jewish and Christian theology, God gave the commandments directly to the Prophet Moses, as described in the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament of the Bible.

Supportive state legislators say the commandments are a historical example of law and not purely religious in nature. But while there are commandments that prohibit murder and stealing, some declare that there are no other gods above God, and that people must observe the Sabbath.

So far this year, no state has enacted legislation requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in public schools. Measures in Mississippi and Oklahoma died in committee. In Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota, they failed after passing out of one legislative chamber. Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs similar GOP-led legislation last year.

Although Republicans dominate the legislature in each of those states, the bills have been a hard sell for Christian lawmakers who say they also value the Constitution.

“So, if we put the Ten Commandments up, which are Christian commandments, then we’re actually violating the plain language of our Constitution in our First Amendment,” Montana state Sen. Jason Ellsworth, a Republican, earlier this month, as reported in the Daily Montanan.

Eight Republicans joined every Democrat in the Montana Senate to defeat the measure.

‘A new day for religious freedom’

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court that Kentucky’s law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools was unconstitutional.

However, 45 years later, supporters of these measures believe there’s a new legal pathway considering the makeup of the nation’s high court. The Supreme Court now has a 6-3 conservative majority, with three of its members appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term.

“It is now a new day for religious freedom in America,” Republican state Sen. Bob Phalen, who sponsored the Montana bill, during a committee hearing last month. “The Supreme Court’s approach on religious displays has evolved over time.”

Indeed, in 2022, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority in favor of a Washington state public school football coach who prayed with his team on the 50-yard line. Images of Moses and the Ten Commandments also appear in many U.S. government buildings, including the Supreme Court and the Capitol.

Bills requiring the display of the Ten Commandments are just one example of Republican state lawmakers attempting to insert religious doctrine into the school day.

On Tuesday, the Republican majority in the Kentucky Senate passed that would require schools to have a moment of silence at the beginning of each day, lasting at least one minute. It now heads to the state House. School staff would be prohibited from telling students how to use the time, but critics — including the ACLU and some members of the state's Jewish community — say students to pray.

In Texas, Republican senators this session legislation that would allow school districts to require every campus "to provide students and employees with an opportunity to participate in a period of prayer and reading of the Bible or other religious text" each day. That bill is sitting in committee.

In Idaho, a bill that Bible readings in schools is also in committee.

In Oklahoma, the state’s top education official last year that the Bible would be incorporated into school curricula. The ACLU in October Oklahoma over the proposal. The suit is ongoing.

And in Nebraska, that would allow local public school boards to hire chaplains is sitting in committee.

The U.S. Supreme Court school-sponsored prayer and Bible readings in 1963.

How it looks in Louisiana

Meanwhile, in Louisiana, Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill last month to public schools, colleges and universities for how to comply with the novel law, which took effect in the new year.

The guidance came with four example posters — one including images of Moses and Republican U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who represents a Louisiana district.

Requirements include that the posters of the Ten Commandments must be at least 11 inches by 14 inches and must be donated to schools; there is no legal penalty for not displaying the canonical edict.

Murrill also advised that the posters be included next to other historical documents, such as the Declaration of Independence.

Murrill said the law was “plainly constitutional.” A federal district court judge disagreed last year when he blocked the law, which “unconstitutional on its face” and “overtly religious.” It seems likely the U.S. Supreme Court will decide which side prevails.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

The school district in Louisiana’s St. Landry Parish waited five months to notify people that their Social Security numbers and other sensitive information were made public after it fell victim to a July 2023 ransomware attack — long after state law mandates and only after a newspaper investigation prompted an inquiry from the Louisiana attorney general’s office. 

A December 2023 investigation by The 74 and The Acadiana Advocate contradicted school district assertions that no sensitive information about students, employees or business owners had been exposed online after the attack. 

Stolen files, the investigation found, include thousands of health insurance records with the Social Security numbers of at least 13,500 people, some 100,000 sales tax records for local and out-of-state companies and several thousand student records, including home addresses and special education status.

Four months after the attack, more than a dozen breach victims told reporters they were unaware their information was readily available online. 

“They want to brush everything under the rug,” said Heather Vidrine, a former St. Landry teacher whose information was exposed in the breach. “The districts don’t want bad publicity.”

Threat actors with the Medusa ransomware gang claimed a cyberattack on the St. Landry school system in July 2023, and the district reported it to the local press and police within days. Cybercriminals published reams of stolen files after the district did not pay its $1 million ransom demand, yet district leaders denied the breach affected sensitive records even after reporters presented them with extensive evidence to the contrary. 

After notifying state police about the attack, district officials were never told about the nature of the data that was stolen or if anything was stolen at all, Tricia Fontenot, the district’s supervisor of instructional technology, said. In the face of cyberattacks, districts routinely hire cybersecurity consultants and attorneys to review the extent to which any sensitive information was exposed and to comply with state data breach notification laws. 

“We never received reports of the actual information that was obtained,” she said in November 2023. “All of that is under investigation. We have not received anything in regards to that investigation.” 

Just hours after the newspaper investigation revealed the data breach, a consumer protection lawyer with the state attorney general’s office was on the  phone with the district, questioning them “directly in response to the article” and informing them of their data breach notification obligations under state law, emails obtained by The Advocate reveal. 

Under Louisiana’s breach notification law, schools and other entities are required to notify affected individuals “without unreasonable delay,” and no later than 60 days after a breach is discovered. Entities that fail to alert the state attorney general’s office within 10 days of notifying affected individuals can face fines up to $4,000 for each day past the 60-day mark.

School board attorney Courtney Joiner responded a day later to the attorney general’s office, saying they were working “to address the notice issue without further delay.”

In a Dec. 21, 2023, letter, Superintendent Milton Batiste III acknowledged to an undisclosed number of victims that their “sensitive information may have been obtained by an unknown malicious third-party,” records show. Officials didn’t send a formal notice to the AG’s office until Jan. 10, 2024.

Math teacher Donna Sarver was among the district educators who received the data breach notification. She blasted school leaders for sending the letter “well after the fact” she and her colleagues had been victimized. 

“I really thought it was too little, too late,” she told reporters. “This should have happened much earlier.” 

School officials couldn’t be reached for comment for this story.

This story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

The $10.5 million the state provided to help people pay for job training and industry certifications ran out approximately six months ahead of schedule.

Legislators added an additional $7.5 million worth of grants to the last week during a budget hearing. The initial $10.5 million for the program was supposed to last through June but ran out in December, .

Named for former Gov. Mike Foster, the grants provide financial support for students looking to earn credentials in high-demand, skilled industries such as construction, health care and information technology.

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The money can be put toward programs at Louisiana’s community and technical colleges and the state Board of Regents has approved. Students can generally receive $3,200 per academic year or $1,600 per semester if they are enrolled full time. The award maxes out at $6,400 in total over three years.

People who qualify must come from households earning less than 300% of the federal poverty level, which is $43,740 for a single person or $90,000 for a family of four. They also cannot have previously earned an undergraduate degree, and the students must also be at least 20 years old to qualify for the current academic year.

The types of job training the grant covers include nursing degrees, masonry, roofing, plumbing, cloud computing and .

The extra $7.5 million being used to fund the programs is unspent money from 2023, the first year the grants were awarded. Not as many people took advantage of the program that year because it was new and not well known at the time, officials said.

Monty Sullivan, head of Louisiana’s Community and Technical College System, said he believed the surge in interest in the program is related to economic factors, such as the rising cost of groceries. People are seeking ways to make more money, he said.

“The program is working. That’s the bottom line,” he said.

The Louisiana Board of Regents has asked that state lawmakers double the funding available for M.J. Foster grants to $21 million for the next academic year.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

With the exception of an uptick in fourth-grade math scores, virtually every state posted disappointing results compared with 2022, when NAEP was last administered. Only two, Alabama and Louisiana, could boast of achievement in either math or English that exceeded what students enjoyed in 2019. 

Amid the dispiriting national data, Louisiana’s sizable gains in elementary reading were a particular bright spot. After trailing the national average in every prior iteration of the test, local policymakers were eager to celebrate the first time their state managed to pull ahead — the result of both sagging performance elsewhere and real gains at home. 

Cade Brumley, Louisiana’s schools chief for the last half-decade, was among them, in both literacy and math at a press conference Wednesday. A career educator who oversaw impressive gains in rural DeSoto Parish before leading the state’s largest district, he took the statewide job just before the pandemic threw schools across the country into chaos.

Since COVID’s emergence, state lawmakers have also undertaken a long consideration of K–12 policy, passing of literacy instruction in 2021 and establishing a statewide (ESAs) last year. State social studies standards , and Brumley’s Department of Education rolled out an initiative aiming to give teachers more autonomy over their day-to-day tasks. 

The results have been promising thus far, with one research consortium to a significant bounce-back from pandemic-era lows at the beginning of last year. Brumley himself has won a measure of national recognition for his leadership, that he might join the second Trump cabinet. 

In an interview with The 74’s Kevin Mahnken, Louisiana’s superintendent discussed what’s working in his state, the roadblocks he believes prevent teachers from succeeding in the classroom, and how he’s targeting math scores next.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

The 74: A number of previous indicators — among them the scores from the last round of NAEP, but also your own state testing — suggested that Louisiana was likely bouncing back from the COVID experience. Were you anticipating good results on the latest exam?

Cade Brumley: This release corresponds with our internal data. When we look at trends on LEAP [the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program, the state’s standardized test], we’re seeing progress on both reading and math. So the NAEP release was not a surprise.

However, it was affirming in many ways. Most of all, it shows that the comprehensive education reform we’ve implemented over the last five years is working. It’s not simply state-level data, it’s national data that’s indicating the progress.

What are the big policy or governance factors that have allowed Louisiana to see this improvement?

I operate from what I call the BRAVE plan: going back to basics, redesigning systems, accelerating parental rights, valuing teachers, and expanding educational freedom. This department is organized to accomplish those things — that’s the way we push out resources, and it’s what drives our conversations with community members, policymakers, and educators. It’s a comprehensive set of reforms we’ve put in place, and it’s really encouraging to see movement.

Right now, we also have a ton of alignment between our governor’s office, our legislature, our state board, and our agency, and that united front helps with implementation in schools. I also think we execute really well. I’ve had conversations with individuals in other states that have attempted similar reforms, but the execution wasn’t what it needed to be. We’re really intentional about both the initial launch of policies, but also support afterwards. 

There are some famous examples of reforms that fall apart between the legislature and the classroom. Are there specific aspects of implementation you’ve focused on?

One thing that’s helped me is that I have experienced so many roles within the system. I can drive a school bus, I can lead a classroom, I can lead a school, and I can lead either a rural or an urban system. When I’m having conversations about education policy, I can relate it to personal experiences when I’ve led in similar situations.

Our teaching and learning team at the Department does a great job. If we’re making hires for our reading team, we’re not bringing anyone onboard who can’t go into a classroom and teach a child to read. We’re not going to hire a staff member to launch or implement in a field when we’re not confident that they can step into a classroom role and deliver math instruction. Those things are important.

Mississippi has received a lot of plaudits for the gains they’ve made on NAEP over the last decade or so. I’m wondering if you’ve consciously emulated the path they took.

I applaud the effort in Mississippi — they definitely stepped out front, specifically on a number of reforms relating to literacy. We had the benefit of seeing that, so our legislative package included items that were in Mississippi’s years before. We probably were a little more assertive, but we absolutely looked at the legislation and policies adopted in Mississippi. Candidly, given the progress they made, why would you not? 

Our reading strategy is the right one, but now we have to work on accelerating math outcomes. It’s good that people can talk about the science of reading, but is there a similar approach to math that is going to be universally accepted? For me, it’s just teaching foundational math skills. Across the country, and in Louisiana, math outcomes decline pretty universally as students matriculate from fourth grade to eighth grade. We want to be the first state in the country to flip that trajectory.

Everyone is pretty familiar by now with some of the big planks of a science-of-reading approach: LETRS training for teachers, universal dyslexia screening, and coaching provided to struggling struggling students, among other things. Can you identify some effective techniques to lift math performance? 

That’s the big question. It’s one that hasn’t been solved nationally, but we have a commitment to try to change it here.  

This gets fairly technical, but in the same way you mentioned LETRS training, at the University of Texas to build a foundational math training; then we required that all math teachers in grades 4–8 undergo that training. We did something similar for K–3 reading, but our math data tells us that serious regression starts in fourth grade, so to mandate that training. 

We’ve done symbolic things, like shipping old-school flash cards with math facts to every elementary school in the state. We’ve used a few online platforms that we feel comfortable supporting, and we offer high-dosage tutoring in both reading and math. Really, we’re trying to take the approach that is yielding results in reading and make it more applicable in math.

If we can blend high-quality instructional materials with confident teachers who are ready to implement them, that’s where the magic happens — particularly when we can also involve parents in that process.

How far does the old-school vision extend? Are you guys going to bring back slide rules?

We’ve got a very wide range of supports, from very traditional flash cards all the way to students getting additional support from AI programs. 

That transition from elementary to middle school is a key area where student engagement declines and learning slows. For all of your state’s impressive growth in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade scores have been stuck at their current level since before the pandemic. How can educators move this needle?

I can’t necessarily answer for what’s happening in other places, but it’s definitely concerning. If I were to opine on it, I’d say that in certain ways, schools have moved away from the original purpose of educating students in academic content so they can be successful. 

Many schools and systems and educators across the country have chased shiny things, and sometimes even ideologies, that aren’t necessarily relevant to simply teaching kids to read and do math. At a time when funding is becoming less plentiful, and states need to look at academic returns on investment, it’s a really good time to focus on schooling, particularly in elementary schools.

Can you please be more specific about that? What do you mean when you talk about extraneous elements distracting schools from teaching?

Many systems, schools, and educators are unfortunately focused on pursuits that aren’t teaching kids to read and do math, and they’re not trained to do it. Teachers are not clinically trained to be social workers or nurses, and many schools attempt to put them in those roles. I am not suggesting those supports aren’t needed, but it shouldn’t be teachers who are made responsible.

If we effectively train teachers to deliver their content, I think we’ll see outcomes improve. 

I’m not a certified math teacher, but if I were to give an opinion, I’d say there are a few explanations for the dip in math between fourth grade and eighth grade. One is that there’s not enough investment in building math fluency in elementary school. We need to be talking more about those foundational skills in the early years, but fourth-grade teachers have also not received the support and training in pre-service programs to be as successful as we would like. 

I will frequently talk to math teachers in grades 4–8 who never intended to hold the job they have. It was an open job they were able to secure, and they’re doing the best they can do, but we owe all of those teachers the training, support, and resources to succeed in teaching. The data indicate that, across the country and in the state of Louisiana, that’s where the slide happens.

When you mention teachers being asked to act like social workers and nurses, it sounds like you’re referencing like social-emotional learning. 

I’m trying not to get into cultural issues, but yes, I think schools have taken on many tasks that they were never ordained to do. We’re trying to narrow the scope of that.

We launched an initiative called , which was meant to remove some of the onerous bureaucracy on teachers and teacher trainings. We wanted to put our foot down on disruptions that complicate the classroom. In general, we think teachers are important; it’s a noble profession, and they need to be supported. We’ve launched differentiated compensation so that, on top of base pay, teachers can receive additional compensation for merit or for staffing a discipline that is in high demand. They shouldn’t be distracted by having to take on all these additional tasks — and that even extends to needing to leave the classroom to make copies and so on. 

Smart, responsive school systems are thinking about ways to be more efficient and allow their teachers as much time on task as possible.

Some has indicated that the prestige and desirability of the teaching career path is at a very low ebb right now. What would you say to a novice or pre-service teacher in Louisiana wondering if they’ve chosen the wrong field?

I’d start with a few data points. Our teaching workforce in Louisiana has grown. We’ve seen our retention numbers increase, including for first-year teachers. Our last data review showed that the rate of teachers exiting the system decreased by two percentage points. So we’re seeing positive signs.

But there’s no doubt that the teaching profession has been under attack. That’s one of the primary reasons we put together Let Teachers Teach. We pulled together several dozen teachers from across the state, and I basically said, ‘I want real solutions, not an exercise for a press release.’ We worked over a period of months, and those teachers developed a series of recommendations that we’ve since turned into policy, and we’ve implemented them across the state.

The results and growth we’ve seen are a testament to the teachers of Louisiana, and I’ve been clear since these results came out that my first nod of appreciation goes to our educators. We have a statewide ballot measure that would offer teachers a permanent pay raise, and that will be up for citizens to vote for in March. These are people who deserve an environment where they are free to teach. They deserve to work for a principal who is acceptable to them, and they should be compensated like professionals.

Louisiana received about $4 billion in federal ESSER funds for pandemic-era school initiatives. National assessments have shown that the $190 billion in overall ESSER spending didn’t come close to bringing student outcomes back to pre-pandemic levels, but I’m interested if you think the state was helped by the support. 

I think the criticisms of the national program are warranted, and you can tell by looking at the Nation’s Report Card. I’m not suggesting that Louisiana is immune: Too many of our kids still aren’t reading on grade level, too many of them can’t do foundational math, and we have too many students enrolled in schools that fail them. We have a ton of work to do.

With the funding we made available, we did try our best to get our state locked into a few core tenets, which mostly related to academic recovery and professional learning for teachers. We for the public, so they could have transparency on how each system was spending their money. But I can’t disagree with the suggestion that some of the ESSER funding was excessive and wasn’t used in the most appropriate ways. We tried to do our best in this state to be good stewards of those dollars, and I haven’t heard much criticism on the way we handled it.

While the overall NAEP picture for Louisiana is very positive, some of the divides are very stark. Digging into the state snapshot, I noticed that while about three-quarters of white fourth graders are at or above the Basic level for reading — meaning they grasp the fundamental skills of literacy — fewer than one-half of African American students are. What accounts for that divide, and what is your department doing to rectify it?

It’s a problem. We need to make sure that we’re lifting every child out there. Out on the stump, this is a question I get frequently: What are we doing to attack these gaps? 

I don’t like to approach it from the mindset of pulling one set of students down to advance another group, but I feel really comfortable about two things I believe will help close this disparity. One is that we just passed that is responsive to the needs of growing every individual student. It double-weights the bottom 25 percent of achievers in every school, so schools across the state are going to have to identify those particular students and know that they’ll be held accountable for both the absolute performance and the growth of those students.

We also passed a law offering high-dosage tutoring for students between the kindergarten and grade-five levels. Every student in those grades who is not proficient in reading or math has to receive high-dosage tutoring throughout the week to improve those outcomes. We’re also trying to take tutoring to scale across the state. We did a pretty good job last year beginning that work, but it’s something we have to fine-tune.

You’ve cited the expansion of educational freedom as one of your critical goals. I can imagine a lot of state superintendents passionately fighting against the rollout of education savings accounts, which were passed in Louisiana last year. Why do you feel differently?

We believe in a broad portfolio of options. In our state, families overwhelmingly choose their traditional neighborhood schools, but we also have a set of public charter partners. In our state, faith-based schooling actually predates public education, so we have a large percentage of our students in non-public schools. We have a robust homeschool community whose independence we want to protect, and now we have ESAs coming in. So it’s a good mix for parents to choose what makes the most sense for their kids.

Many education advocates would argue, though, that voucher-like programs take resources away from the public system — including charters, which have posted some incredible results in New Orleans. Do you disagree?

I appreciate the question, and it’s certainly something we hear, but you either believe in education freedom, or you don’t. I believe in educational freedom. So I’m going to do everything within my power to make sure we have that portfolio available for families and we do our part to make each of those options as strong as it possibly can be.

How do you plan on celebrating a result like this? Are you headed to a crawfish boil this weekend?

Look, we’re very excited. Our team is excited, teachers are excited, the governor is excited — everyone is happy about the progress. I am thankful too. This is a place we’ve never been as a state.

But too many kids can’t read on grade level. Too many can’t do math. And too many are still stuck in schools that are failing them. We’ve got a ton of work to do.

NEW ORLEANS – Three judges on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals considered arguments Thursday over a state law that requires displays of the Ten Commandments in every Louisiana public school classroom.

A group of nine parents, each on behalf of their children, sued to block the law shortly after the Louisiana Legislature and Gov. Jeff Landry approved it last spring. A lower court ruled in November the requirement violates the First Amendment’s prohibition against establishing a state-approved religion.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill appealed that ruling, which the 5th Circuit decided only applied to the five school districts that are among the defendants in the case. For every other district, at the start of this month.

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The American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are also representing the plaintiffs in the case. The law firm Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett is providing its services to the parents at no cost.

In addition to the five school districts, Louisiana Education Superintendent Cade Brumley and members of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education are defendants.

Judge Catharina Haynes led the hearing conducted via Zoom because of the winter weather. She  questioned why the law was approved when Solicitor General Benjamin Agiuñaga presented his arguments.

“I’m respectful of the Ten Commandments, and I think everybody is,” said Haynes, federal court appointee of former President George W. Bush. “But that doesn’t mean it has to be put in every classroom in a state under the First Amendment.”

Aguiñaga said the law’s language notes the historical significance of the commandments in the foundation of the U.S. legal system merits their display in classrooms.

In addition to defending the law, Aguiñaga argued the plaintiffs filed their lawsuit too hastily because the displays had not yet been posted and no children had been harmed. The judges must rule first on whether the parents had the right to sue before considering the merits of their case.

Aguiñaga cited a 2007 ruling from the 5th Circuit in the case Staley v. Harris County, which involved a memorial display outside a Texas courthouse that included a Bible. Appellate judges first upheld a lower court ruling that deemed the monument unconstitutional, but the 5th Circuit later reversed its decision. The ruling declared that because the monument was being refurbished, it wasn’t clear yet what it would look like or whether it violated the First Amendment.

Jonathan Youngwood, an attorney for the plaintiffs, countered that legal theory in First Amendment cases does not require plaintiffs to be harmed before they seek relief.

He also stressed the religious intent of the law’s author, Rep. Dodie Horton, R-Haughton, who he quoted as saying: “It is so important that our children learn what God says is right and what he says is wrong.”

Youngwood also noted “religious references” to God and the Sabbath day in the first four commandments, which he said violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

“Of course the Ten Commandments are worthy of great respect and are profoundly meaningful to many, many people, and they have a place in our society,” Youngwood said. “They don’t have a place in this form in public schools.”

Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, an appointee of President Joe Biden, asked Aguiñaga if he could cite any prior court decisions that allowed displays of the Ten Commandments in a school setting. He could not but instead referenced a ruling that allowed students who are Jehovah’s Witnesses to abstain from the Pledge of Allegiance.

“The fact that they are allowed under the First Amendment to opt out of participating in the pledge doesn’t mean that they can also request that the flag be taken down or that the pledge not be said,” Aguiñaga said.

Judge Haynes voiced some skepticism of Aguiñaga’s reference to the Staley case, noting that few people are compelled to go to a courthouse while children are required to go to school.

Judge James Dennis, who former President Bill Clinton appointed to the federal bench, also heard arguments Thursday.

Haynes said the appellate judges would do their best to render a decision in the near future.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma lawmaker says he hopes new House leadership will support a better outcome for his resurrected bill to display the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.

Rep. Jim Olsen, R-Roland, has refiled the bill after it failed last year. would require a poster or a framed copy of the Ten Commandments to be posted in a conspicuous place in every public school classroom in Oklahoma, a state where the .

“The Ten Commandments is one of our founding documents,” Olsen said. “It was integral and central to the life of the founders and to our people in general during the founding of the nation, and for us to give our children an honest history of how things really were, I think that needs to be included.”

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Louisiana requiring school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. Enforcement of the law is blocked in five Louisiana school districts after a .

In 2015, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ordered the removal of a statue of the Ten Commandments from the state Capitol, finding it a violation of the state Constitution. A year later, Oklahoma voters upheld the state Constitution’s prohibition against spending public funds for religious purposes.

Despite the Louisiana ruling and past decisions in Oklahoma, Olsen said he believes his bill has a viable legal future in light of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

The Court in 2022 of a high school football coach praying with players at games. In doing so, the Court abandoned its long-standing , which it had used to measure compliance with the First Amendment and church-state separation.

Olsen’s bill will have to gain significantly more traction than it did last year for it to become law in Oklahoma.

His previous bill died early in the 2024 legislative session after it failed to get an initial hearing in a House committee on education appropriations. The panel’s chairperson who declined to hear the bill, Rep. Mark McBride, R-Moore, is one of several leading House Republicans who are no longer in office because of term limits.

Olsen said he is “cautiously optimistic” that new House leaders will be supportive.

McBride’s successor at the head of the education appropriations committee, Rep. Chad Caldwell, R-Enid, said it would be premature to comment on whether he would give the bill a hearing. He said he hasn’t read the legislation nor has it been assigned yet to a committee for review.

Oklahoma’s top education official, state Superintendent Ryan Walters, advocated for the legislation last year. Walters called the Ten Commandments a “founding document of our country” and an “important historical precedent.”

Since then, Walters in every classroom and . Several district leaders have said they won’t comply, and a .

Walters’ administration of Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA Bible, which the state superintendent said he would place in AP government classrooms. He also that include 40 references to the Bible.

“The breakdown in classroom discipline over the past 40 years is in no small measure due to the elimination of the Ten Commandments as guideposts for student behavior,” Walters said about Olsen’s bill last year. “I will continue to fight against state-sponsored atheism that has caused society to go downhill.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

The other five districts are among the defendants in a suit filed by nine families, charging that the law is unconstitutional. The mandate is on hold in East Baton Rouge, Livingston, Orleans, St. Tammany and Vernon parishes until the appellate court takes up the issue. State Superintendent Cade Brumley and members of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education are also defendants.

On Nov. 12, U.S. District Judge John DeGravelles issued a barring the law from taking effect, saying the state was not likely to prevail in the suit. Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church & State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the plaintiffs include atheists, Jews, and Presbyterian and Unitarian Universalist clergy, among others.

State Attorney General Liz Murrill filed an appeal asking that the mandate take effect in the 68 parishes not named in the lawsuit, and the appellate panel ruled in her favor.

The first mandate of its kind in more than 40 years,  calls for classroom posters at least 11 by 14 inches in size displaying a state-approved version of the biblical laws in a “large, easily readable font,” accompanied by a statement describing “the history of the Ten Commandments in American Public Education.”

Passed in June, the act requires that a specific, Protestant version be used, accompanied by a “context statement” asserting that “the Ten Commandments were a prominent part of American education for almost three centuries.” Supposed examples given include “The New England Primer,” created around 1688, McGuffey “Readers” from the early 1800s and textbooks published by Noah Webster, DeGravelles noted in his opinion.

“I can’t wait to be sued,” Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry told attendees at a GOP fundraiser this summer, as he prepared to sign the edict. “If you want to respect the rule of law, you got to start from the original law given, which was Moses’. He got his commandments from God.” 

Far-right lawmakers in , Utah and South Carolina this year considered but did not pass similar bills, while Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters ordered schools in his state to incorporate the Bible — “which includes the Ten Commandments,” he noted — as “an instructional support into the curriculum.” 

At the time the Louisiana suit was filed, legal analysts told The 74 the mandate appeared to set up a case that would essentially dare the U.S. Supreme Court to reinterpret the First Amendment’s opening line — “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Courts have repeatedly held that the Establishment Clause prohibits the creation or endorsement of a state religion.

The of making “false statements relating to a purported history and connection between the Ten Commandments and government and public education in the United States,” in one instance by fabricating a quote to that effect by James Madison, the Constitution’s primary author. In fact, the complaint says, what Madison wrote was that “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”

With 12 of its 17 active judges Republican appointees — six named by President-elect Donald Trump during his first term — the 5th Circuit is the  in the nation. It has become a key venue for  drafted by the conservative Christian legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom and others hoping to advance cases that could allow the Supreme Court to shift precedents. The most notable of these has been Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Mississippi suit that overturned abortion rights.

In addition to appealing the Ten Commandments lawsuit, Murrill recently sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, arguing that a major law requiring a host of protections for students with disabilities is unconstitutional. Ostensibly, the lawsuit seeks to overturn a Biden administration rule that Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 protects those who experience gender dysphoria, a clinical diagnosis given to some transgender people.

If Murrill succeeds, however, the case could create a precedent weakening laws against numerous prohibitions on in-school discrimination, according to disability advocates and attorneys cited by the New Orleans news site The Lens, which against federal officials.

A Louisiana law that will require schools to place displays of the Ten Commandments in every classroom is “coercive” and “unconstitutional,” according to the federal judge who issued an order Tuesday that stops the law from taking effect Jan. 1.

Nine families have sued the state, arguing the new law amounts to the state endorsing a religion and conflicts with the First Amendment.

Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill, who is defending the law that GOP Gov. Jeff Landry signed, maintains the Ten Commandments have historic standing as a foundational document for U.S. law.

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“We strongly disagree with the court’s decision and will immediately appeal,” Murrill said in a statement sent through her spokesman.

In a social media later in the day, the attorney general noted the ruling applies only to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the four parish school boards that are named defendants in the lawsuit.

“School boards are independently elected, local political subdivisions in Louisiana,” Murrill wrote. “Only five school boards are defendants, therefore the judge only has jurisdiction over those five. This is far from over.”

The new law requires 11-by-14-inch displays along with an accompanying “context statement” that explains the commandments’ role in education. It applies to any school that accepts state money, including colleges and universities. The schools are not compelled to spend money on the posters though they can accept donated materials.

U.S. District Judge John deGravelles, a federal court appointee of President Barack Obama to Louisiana’s Middle District Court in Baton Rouge, said in his that the plaintiffs would more than likely prevail in their case. He wrote that the law amounts to coercion because families must ensure their minor children attend school.

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The American Civil Liberties Union, which is among the organizations representing the plaintiffs, called the ruling “a victory for religious freedom.” The plaintiffs include non-Christian and nonreligious families.

“This ruling will ensure that Louisiana families – not politicians or public school officials – get to decide if, when and how their children engage with religion,” said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, another group representing the plaintiffs. “It should send a strong message to Christian Nationalists across the country that they cannot impose their beliefs on our nation’s public school children. Not on our watch.”

Defendants in the case include Louisiana K-12 Superintendent Cade Brumley, members of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the school boards from East Baton Rouge, Livingston, St. Tammany and Vernon parishes.

The plaintiffs argue Louisiana’s law violates the long-standing precedent from Stone v. Graham, a 1980 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned a similar statute in Kentucky.

Landry welcomed a legal challenge of the new law before he signed it, predicting the Supreme Court would uphold the measure. He and other conservatives have been buoyed by a 2022 ruling from justices in favor of a high school football coach in Washington state who was fired after praying at midfield after games and allowing students to join him. After the 6-3 decision in Bremerton v. Kennedy, the coach was rehired at the school.

“I cannot wait to be sued,” the governor said at a June fundraiser for Republicans in Tennessee.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on and .