Priorities in education, or anywhere else for that matter, must be driven by a vision of what it is we want to achieve. Our actions and policies as a state should lead us to the outcomes we desire. These ten points represent CABL’s near-term aspirations for public education in Louisiana. They are values that are important and that we believe all citizens and candidates can embrace. 

1. All Louisiana students should be performing, at the very least, on grade level every year. This would require every student, with exceptions for those with clear learning disabilities, to be scoring at the “basic” skill level or above on state tests.
2. All schools should have School Performance Scores of 120 or above. Using our new school performance labeling system, that means schools should receive a letter grade of “A.”
3. The state high school graduation rate should be 90-percent or better. It is currently about 67-percent.
4. Every student who desires to excel to more advanced academic levels should have an opportunity to be in a school or program that allows that to happen.
5. All of Louisiana’s at-risk students should have access to high-quality preK programs and every child should enter kindergarten prepared to learn.
6. Every classroom should have a competent, highly-qualified teacher and every school should have a strong principal with the autonomy to make decisions that are in the best interests of helping students learn.
7. Policymakers and educators at every level in education should embrace innovation, excellence, high standards, increased expectations and improved student performance in every aspect of their responsibilities, policies and actions.
8. Louisiana must have strong accountability measures with clear reporting of academic achievement at the student, school, district and state levels.  Citizens deserve reporting that reflects clearly and accurately how much students are learning and oppose effort to artificially inflate or obscure the actual performance of schools and districts.
9. Parents should have more options for where they send their children to public schools.
10. Education policies and actions should follow strategies that will help reverse the state’s long trends of out-migration, poverty, crime and relatively low levels of high-tech and knowledge-based jobs. This requires not only turning around failing schools, but improving average schools, and increasing access to high-achieving and specialized schools.

These are among the things CABL believes in when it comes to public education in Louisiana. Education “reform” is what we do to make them happen. From CABL’s perspective, if the actions we take and the policies we implement are not moving in the direction of these or similar values, then one must question whether they really represent reform or just the same old politics.