BATON ROUGE, La. – The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) today announced the launch of "Louisiana Comeback," a coordinated campaign to recover and accelerate learning lost due to the previous year's challenges. LDOE is asking school systems across the state to join the "Louisiana Comeback" by committing to invest a portion of their Elementary and School Relief funds into three primary areas:
- Attendance and Well-Being
- Recovery and Acceleration
- Professional Learning
"I'm excited to see the tremendous progress our students will make by school systems collectively focusing their funds, time and effort into areas that bolster student achievement," said Dr. Cade Brumley, State Superintendent of Education. "Louisiana school systems have received about $4 billion dollars of stimulus funds to support efforts like these, and we need to use our one-time resources well. We must utilize the dollars to get us through this tough time and prepare our state to be better post-pandemic.”
Attendance and Well-Being
“Louisiana Comeback” aims to encourage the creation of engaging, belonging, and risk-free environments for students. LDOE believes that instituting well-being policies enhances intrinsic motivation, decreases disciplinary problems, increases academic achievement, improves school satisfaction, and leads to thriving individuals, communities, and nations. Simply stated, those who feel better can learn better.
Recovery and Acceleration
“Louisiana Comeback'' incentivizes schools to invest in activities that recover and accelerate student learning, reducing instructional loss from the past two school years and helping put students back on track. For example, the campaign promotes massive efforts around tutoring, literacy intervention, graduation planning, and afterschool and summer programs.
Professional Learning
LDOE maintains that literacy outcomes improve when students are provided with high-quality core instruction and explicit literacy interventions and extensions based on individuals’ needs. Therefore, “Louisiana Comeback” suggests schools implement policies that allow teachers to have regular and devoted time to collaborate around their craft as well as professional learning opportunities.
Comeback Campuses
LDOE will recognize schools that make significant gains by designating each a "Comeback Campus."
These improvements in student outcomes include:
- Increases in percent of students scoring mastery and above on the statewide assessment
- Decreases in percent of students scoring unsatisfactory on the statewide assessment
- Increase in student ACT scores
Schools that receive the "Comeback Campus” designation gain a variety of benefits, such as:
- Access to additional funds to scale evidence-based activities
- Opportunities to participate in research study of best practices
- Round table discussions with the State Superintendent
- Opportunities to lead sessions for educators at state and national conferences
- Official recognition ceremony with banner
- Recognition on School Finder
Fiscal Dashboard
LDOE is developing a fiscal dashboard to report how the state and school systems are budgeting and spending pandemic relief funds and ensuring:
- investments have a collective impact - from the state to classrooms
- planning is outcomes, strategic and priorities-based
- transparency and accountability remain the top priority
If you have any questions, please contact Matthew.Johnson2@La.Gov.
For more information, visit Louisiana Comeback's website.
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