A year ago, the Council for A Better Louisiana started a new initiative to try to put together a comprehensive picture of how Louisiana is doing in important areas. It’s called “The Louisiana Fact Book: Facts for the Future.”
One of the first reactions we got was, “Oh no, another list like all the others that put us at 48th, 49th or 50th. Just what we need!”
Well, they were right about one thing. It is a list. It’s a collection of 35 indicators that try to provide some perspective on where we stand in five big areas: education, the economy, health and well-being, infrastructure and the environment and energy.
But the goal was not to rank us with all the other states to tell us what we already know. The point was to begin a process of trying to measure our improvement in areas that a lot of people pay close attention to. Sure, we don’t look great in a lot of them, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t improve. And if we are getting better, how would we know?
That’s what we are trying to answer with the Louisiana Fact Book.
Barry Erwin
Provided photo
We used 2023 as a benchmarking year to give us a snapshot in time from which we could start tracking our progress to see if we are moving in the right direction. What did we find? A mix. There are some bright spots and encouraging signs in some areas, but the overall trend is that we are moving slightly backward. That’s not good.
Since August 2023, 16 indicators are trending downward compared to 13 the year before. Seven were down for two years in a row. Similarly, 16 indicators are trending upward, but that’s down from 18 the prior year. On the positive side, half of them showed progress for two straight years while three remained unchanged.
One of the brighter spots we found was in education. During the course of CABL’s tracking, Louisiana has seen progress on five of the 10 indicators in that area. Most encouraging is that Louisiana’s scores in third grade reading, an area that has received a great deal of recent attention, have trended up six points since 2022.
The percentage of economically disadvantaged students in grades 3-8 performing at mastery or above has grown four points during that same period. That outpaces the growth of the student population as a whole, though lower-income students are still about eight points behind their peers overall.
Another highlight is the continued growth in the education attainment rate of our working-age population, where about 50% now have a postsecondary credential.
A concern is that kindergarten readiness has been trending downward, a wake-up call that explains why we must boost our investment in early childhood education.
In terms of the economy, it’s more of a mixed bag. There seems to be improvement for those at the lower end of the economic spectrum. Poverty rates are down and income rose by almost 3.5%, though that was at a lower rate than the rest of the country.
But the broader barometers of the state’s economic well-being show concerning trends. Population loss and outmigration are a continuing problem. Employment growth has been almost nonexistent over the last decade, and while it did tick up slightly over the last year, that was far less than what was seen in almost every southern state. After recent improvement, Louisiana fell in the Tax Foundation’s ranking for state business tax climate.
At the same time, Louisiana continues to fare poorly in most measures of health and overall well-being, though the state’s violent crime rate and prison recidivism rates both showed improvement.
So, yes there’s a little bit of the good, the bad and the ugly in our findings. That’s not great, but the point is we need to pay attention to these indicators and especially their trends. They are the vital signs of our state and the things outsiders look at when they consider whether it makes sense to invest in Louisiana.
And while our leaders spend a lot of time talking about issues that garner public attention, we need to ask them to spend even more time focusing on ways to make our state more healthy, connected and prosperous. We may not be able to skyrocket into the top 10 overnight. But there is no reason for us not to be moving in that direction.
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Publish date : 2024-08-29 22:00:00
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