The History Matters Campaign is a project of the Knowledge Matters Campaign. This column was originally published on Education Week’s “Straight Up Rick Hess” blog on May 22, 2025.
This year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress results were mostly grim, but there was one bright spot: The impressive growth in performance by a handful of Southern states. I recently chatted with Louisiana state chief Cade Brumley about what’s driving his state’s success. That conversation prompted a note from Matthew Levey, a charter school founder with an abiding interest in curriculum and instructional materials. He now uses the insights he gleaned from leading the International Charter School of New York as an independent consultant. Levey shared some thoughts about what he saw this spring while observing some Louisiana classrooms. I suggested sharing it, and he agreed. Here’s what he had to say:
– Rick
Dear Rick,
Confounding those who think of Southern states as benighted, when we adjust the 2024 NAEP reading results to account for poverty, states like Mississippi and Louisiana actually emerge as high performers alongside traditional leaders like Massachusetts. Of course, as your conversation with Louisiana Superintendent Cade Brumley indicates, you’ve been following this story for a while. You discussed some elements of Louisiana’s post-COVID gains, including the focus on high-quality instructional materials, but I wanted to dig deeper.
Last month, I visited Highland Elementary School in Ouachita Parish, in northeastern Louisiana, as part of the History Matters Campaign. Some readers may have seen Ouachita mentioned in a recent New York Times story. I was especially interested in the impact of Louisiana’s new homegrown elementary-grades history curriculum, Bayou Bridges, and how state and district leaders are setting teachers up for success.
Bayou Bridges, which the Louisiana education department developed in partnership with the Core Knowledge Foundation, knits together history, geography, civics, and economics to build student knowledge and literacy skills in grades K-8. In Ouachita Parish, teachers use Bayou Bridges alongside two ELA curricula, Louisiana Guidebooks and Core Knowledge Language Arts, that my colleagues at the Knowledge Matters Campaign recognize as content-rich and based on the science of reading.
Over two days, I, along with colleagues from the Core Knowledge Foundation, observed the three curricula in action and was impressed by each program individually. However, we were even more impressed by how well the curricula worked together. The reading, discussion, and writing required by these programs gave students plenty of opportunities to learn complex vocabulary and ideas and use them in context.
Not only are the materials well-designed, but the state has stayed true to its focus on implementing high-quality curriculum across superintendents and election cycles—and it shows. Since 2002, Louisiana has published curriculum ratings to inform district decisions and recruited teacher “ambassadors” to nudge districts toward selecting better-rated programs. It also created the Louisiana Guidebooks ELA program, which is available for free.
Local leaders are building on the state’s work by providing continual teacher development to support curriculum implementation with fidelity. In Ouachita Parish, professional learning is varied and ongoing. The district’s chief academic officer, Curtis Pate, said that he remains committed to funding these programs despite dwindling ESSER funds.
Transitioning to Bayou Bridges hasn’t been easy, but in addition to professional learning, the district also increased the number of experienced educators in teacher-support roles. Robin Austin, the district’s instructional coordinator, observed that in decisions about adopting new curriculum, “we have to ensure there is teacher voice.” One teacher underscored the urgency of transitioning to a rigorous curriculum, noting, “Our kids weren’t ready for college or [a] career.” Her colleague added, “And [to do that], we need to put more of the work on the kids.”
At a community meeting, one teacher spoke up in front of her principal, the district superintendent, and the chair of the local board of education, acknowledging that prior to her curriculum training, she knew little about the colonial period: “I thought the Boston Tea Party was a party.” Her honesty underscored the supportive environment Ouachita has created. In another public comment, an administrator shared that his 1st grade daughter pronounces the names of Greek gods and goddesses “that I’ve never even heard of.”
From where I stood, the kids seemed to know a lot about the past. In Lauren Cascio’s 5th grade lesson on the Scientific Revolution, we heard insightful discussions on how Galileo felt about his “heretical” idea that the solar system was “heliocentric” and not “geocentric.” Embedding sophisticated vocabulary words into student readers and expecting the kids to use them is a key feature of a curriculum like Bayou Bridges.
Students were also ready and able to have complex and respectful conversations. I often hear about teachers who feel unable to explore controversial topics, but in Ouachita Parish—a community with deep religious convictions—the teacher was comfortable asking three boys to think about what it meant to contradict the Bible. If our goal is for citizens to be able to debate difficult concepts respectfully, we have to start providing children with the vocabulary and history to describe and understand the roots of a given issue early on.
In a 4th grade lesson about the American Revolution, teacher Angela Barfoot began by introducing the word “colonel.” “It sounds like it ought to be spelled like a popcorn kernel, right?” the teacher asked. Students then read about Colonel William Prescott, who led a company of Minutemen during the siege of Boston, and used sophisticated vocabulary in meaningful discussions about topics such as why Prescott told his troops, “Don’t fire ‘till you see the whites of their eyes.” Toward the end of the class, a student was asked to summarize what he’d learned. After some pauses and self-corrections, he said, “Colonel George Washington was appointed by the Continental Congress to lead the colonial army.” His pleasure at using several of the lesson’s complicated vocabulary words in context was reflected in a huge grin. When introducing Bayou Bridges, Louisiana explained students must be taught how to “develop and argue claims, and ultimately express those claims in writing.” I certainly saw evidence of that in this class.
We had the chance to speak with students outside of class as well. One 4th grader talked enthusiastically about visiting Poverty Point, a nearby UNESCO World Heritage site built by Native Americans in the 14th century BC. She wasn’t the only one excited; a teacher shared that, as the bus drove up, her students cheered with excitement at seeing things they had studied in class. Understanding chronology and their place in time is critical to building students’ understanding and reasoning ability. If we give them context, students can imagine across millennia.
The same 4th grader also told us that learning about Greek gods and goddesses in school made reading Percy Jackson novels more fun and that reading Percy Jackson novels made social studies class more enjoyable. This virtuous circle of reinforcement illustrates the Matthew Effect: the [knowledge] rich get richer. As cognitive psychologist Dan Willingham explained nearly two decades ago, knowledge “grows exponentially. Those with a rich base of factual knowledge find it easier to learn more.”
Far too often, we hear aspirations to train kids in “critical thinking” as if it were a skill independent of knowledge of facts and figures. But Haley Holley, a district social studies coordinator and high school teacher, told us that by using a knowledge-rich curriculum, “our students now have something to think about.” As a high school teacher, she loves that when she teaches about the 1950s, her students already know who Senator Joseph McCarthy is.
Louisiana’s long-standing commitment to knowledge-rich curricula, matched with its investment in high-quality teacher development, offers lessons from which we all can learn. The Knowledge Matters Campaign has visited 50 districts to highlight excellent curriculum and instruction over the last seven years. During this most recent visit, we saw how rich, knowledge-building history instruction adds powerfully to reading and writing outcomes and gives students critical context to understand their world. If the Pelican State becomes as popular a destination for education reformers as Finland once was, all of our children have the potential to be as engaged and successful as the ones I met in Ouachita.