Louisiana Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley was the final speaker for the Bossier Chamber of Commerce’s public policy series on Tuesday.
Brumley spoke about some of the recently approved changes the state has made for education policies, and the positive effects that school districts and teachers have seen.
The new cell phone policy that changed with the start of the school year in August has had the most effect on majority school districts, Brumley said.
“They said, ‘Kids are talking to each other at lunch and they’re not texting each other at the cafeteria table.’ One teacher said, ‘I am having to prepare more content than before because my pacing was slower before in class,’ because the students were on the cell phones, and they weren’t expecting that,” Brumley said.
He also spoke about the policy that reduces the time students spend with LEAP testing and how more tutoring for students will be provided in schools since a $30 million fund was provided for tutoring.
“We can reduce the amount of time that students are spending on testing, because if we reduce the amount of time students are spending on testing, they’re able to then spend that with instruction with the teacher. So the reduction that we’ve made effective immediately is grades three through eight in English and math. It’s a 20% reduction.” Brumley said.
This was the last event of the year for the public policy series.