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Wednesday’s release of scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress delivered more bad news about the state of America’s post-COVID learning recovery. 

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, citing “historic progress” 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 a sweeping reform of literacy instruction in 2021 and establishing a statewide system of education savings accounts (ESAs) last year. State social studies standards were overhauled as well, 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 already pointing 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, including rumors 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, we partnered with the Dana Center 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 we passed legislation 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?

[Laughter] When I say “back to basics,” I mean it. We’re going to do base-10 exercises in the school parking lot, whatever it takes. Foundational skills really matter. You’ve got to know third-grade math material if you’re going to be successful in fourth-grade math. 

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 complaints about recent mandates 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 Let Teachers Teach, 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 very alarming research 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 built out a dashboard 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 a revised accountability formula 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.

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