Coherence? Professionalism? High academic achievement? Gee, seems worth studying.
Pretty much the only good-news story in education through the first half of 2025 has been the “Southern Surge”—the impressive National Assessment of Educational Progress gains posted by Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee amidst an otherwise dreary landscape. Well, last month, I went down to Louisiana to help kick off the state’s 2025 Teacher Leader Summit with state chief Cade Brumley. While I’m admittedly skeptical of edu-convenings, I found this show pretty impressive: three carefully orchestrated days honoring 7,000 “teacher leaders” at the New Orleans Convention Center.
I don’t want to dwell on the summit, other than to note that it was heartening to see a state putting this kind of thought into teachers. (I used to urge this sort of thing back when I penned The Cage-Busting Teacher in 2015, and Louisiana is a pioneer on this count.) But I do think it’s worth being clear about just how well Louisiana and its southern brethren are doing. As Brumley told me earlier this spring, “Our 4th grade scores have led the country in reading growth for the past two NAEP cycles and ranked in the top five for math growth.” Louisiana is the only state in the nation where 4th-grade reading achievement on NAEP has surpassed pre-pandemic levels. In other words, this isn’t one of those foundation-fueled PR exercises—the results are real.
Anyway, I’m moved to share a few loosely connected reflections that emerged during a long, meandering conversation I had at the summit with Brumley, who I find to be one of the nation’s sharper education thinkers…