Education

The Board of Regents is thinking of ways to bring in new funds to make up for the past five years of budget cuts sustained by the Louisiana University System.

The Board of Regents met for the first time this year on Thursday morning. Newly appointed members Richard Lipsey, Joel Dupre, and Edward Markle were sworn in and got straight to business.

Commissioner of Higher Education Jim Purcell addressed the Board with a presentation on the state of state higher education.

Chairman W. Clinton Rasberry requested the presentation.

Louisiana has jumped up in the ranks on a national education scorecard.

Education Week’s "Quality Counts" report, which combines measures of policy and performance, ranks the state 15th overall, up from 23rd last year.   

Louisiana gets an 'A' for accountability and curriculum policy, and an 'F' for student achievement.

A unique study released last week by the LSU/Tulane Early Childhood Policy and Data Center uses maps to show where certain risk factors that could impede early childhood development are most prevalent across the state.

LSU Public Policy Research Lab Director Kirby Goidel and Epidemiologist Lina Brou said their study found that 55 of Louisiana’s 64 parishes have at least one high-risk factor that could impede childhood development such as high unemployment, high teen birth rate and high percentage of uninsured children. The nature of that risk was also found to differ from parish-to-parish.

Goidel said the initial step to addressing the needs of the children across Louisiana is to first understand the nature of the risk in each parish.

Georgia higher education officials have a goal: by 2020, they want 60 percent of young adults in the state to earn some kind of college credential.

They’ve got a long way to go. In 2011, just over 36 percent of 24 to 34-year-olds in that state had earned an Associates Degree or better, about another 6 percent have a certificate.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has called for a state officials to look at safety measures at Louisiana public and private schools, from pre-K through college.

The governor issued the executive order Friday in the wake of the mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school last month.

On the day of that shooting, State Police Col. Mike Edmonson, said his department immediately started talking about making sure they would be able to respond if something similar happened here.