“Louisiana is making progress in education. Public school students are improving their academic achievement and today they have more school and course choices than ever before. More young people are prepared for opportunities after high school, and public schools are making better connections to the demands of our growing economy.

This is good news, and it’s the result of two things:

Over the last several years, Louisiana has put in place a strong framework of highly-regarded education policies and innovations.
The hard work of effective educators and school leaders is paying off.

Unfortunately, many of our school systems across the state still lag behind. To close that gap, we need a sustained effort to keep moving forward while accelerating the pace of our improvement. How do we do that?”

That’s an excerpt from Advancing Opportunities for Louisiana Students: A Guide to Louisiana Education Policies. It’s a new election year publication from CABL and that’s just one of the issues we explore.

This new guide isn’t a big report. It’s a user-friendly primer for voters, candidates, and anyone with an interest in Louisiana’s education policies. In it we look at where we stand on key indicators, review some of the more recent policy changes that have been enacted, explain how they all fit together into a bigger picture, and identify areas where we need additional attention.

We think that’s important.

In many ways, as a recent Advocate editorial suggests, this election year has been short on a full discussion of issues. That’s unfortunate, but it doesn’t have to be short on information. CABL’s education guide is one example of this and so are the policy briefings and recommendations from RESET Louisiana, CABL’s collaboration with the Public Affairs Research Council and the Committee of 100.

Early voting is wrapping up and Election Day is coming quickly. But it’s not too late for both voters and candidates to think about our future and the issues we can address to move Louisiana forward. At the end of the day, that should be our focus. Not the distractions of the political campaigns, but what our political leaders will do to lift Louisiana off the bottom and into the mainstream of states creating greater opportunities for their citizens.

But it all starts with information.