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Learn from the states weathering the storm while thinking bigger about the solutions to our learning crisis 

Eric Hanushek, writing for Education Next, believes “today’s policymakers and educators need to look beyond policies aimed at short-run remediation and consider more fundamental change.”

In his analysis of the main NAEP results released last year, Hanushek shows that the school closures during the pandemic had a greater impact on student learning than “any single event in the postwar period,” with 8th grade students losing over a year of math and half a year of reading. At the same time, it’s also clear that our educational declines started well before Covid hit.

Given the outsized role and responsibilities that state governance has on education quality, it is likely not a surprise that both the depths of the crisis and the resilience of learning recovery efforts were not equally distributed across the country. When looking at just how far each state fell from their peak performance by drawing upon the results of the main NAEP released last year, Eric found a wide split.

While all states lost some ground from their peak performance, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, states that readers of the Roundup know have scored consistently higher marks on NAEP following the pandemic, have only fallen 0.1 standard deviations. On the other end, the declines in Delaware, Vermont and Maryland were nearly five times larger. 

The starting point for charting a path forward is to learn from the states that have done the most to weather this difficult storm. But Hanushek makes the case that we also need to think bigger than any state has to date: “Education reform efforts over the past half century have aimed to enhance or improve various aspects of the public education system while retaining the essence of its institutional structure … Their collective failure accentuates the need to look at the problem differently and to pursue fundamental institutional change.

Learn from Louisiana in advancing career pathways

“With universal tutoring and choice in place, the natural next place to turn was career pathways,” Kelli Bottger explained as she took stock at the close of Louisiana’s 2026 legislative session. “We need our students in Louisiana to have the skills they need to enter the workforce when they graduate high school. What’s happening now is that, for many students, they’re graduating into unemployment because of a lack of clear career pathways. I knew that needed to change.”

This year, the Louisiana team worked on policies across the Believe in Better framework, securing an additional $43 million for the GATOR scholarship, an additional $30 million for the first-in-the-nation universal tutoring program and $1 million for charter facilities. But it was work on career pathways that stood out with three key reforms:

• Career pathways coaching for high school counselors so they can help students identify the pathways with the strongest return on investment.
• Mandatory student career experiences, ensuring that every student will be introduced to a variety of career paths before they graduate.
• Strengthening career data to illuminate the return on investment of each career program.

“There’s still more to do on career pathways,” Kelli said, “But with the data system in place and every student in Louisiana exposed to a range of career options, I think we’re poised for real progress. I’m thankful that our legislators are taking this seriously.

Key Resources

In a survey of elected school board members, Brookings finds that school boards are much older than the US population and only a quarter would give their districts an ‘A’ rating, among many other fascinating headlines.

In Education Next, Anna Egalite argues that traditional school calendars now have so many holidays and teacher workdays that the four-day schoolweek is quietly becoming the norm. 

Checker Finn, writing at Fordham, believes that now is the time for advocates to fight for higher standards and greater assessment rigor to turn sliding national achievement around.