Jill S Cannon

Louisiana has received recent attention for some of its new education policies and promising early results. This report provides an in-depth description of Louisiana's approach to improving student outcomes since 2012. The authors examine the state's strategies and potential challenges in four areas: early childhood education, K-12 academics, K-12 teacher preparation, and graduation pathways.

This report examines evaluations of early childhood programs that meet criteria for scientific rigor and synthesizes their results to better understand program outcomes, costs, and benefits. It focuses on programs serving children or parents of children from the prenatal period to age 5. The programs reviewed use approaches alone or in combination that include early care and education, home visiting, parent education, and government transfers.