For the International School of Louisiana (ISL) Uptown campus, language is the foundation of everything. As a K-8 public immersion school, students spend nearly a decade mastering subjects in French or Spanish. However, while the school excelled in language arts, a persistent challenge remained: middle school math.
“I kept seeing around me low middle school math scores,” recalls Dr. Laura Adelman-Cannon, Principal of ISL Uptown. “Whatever success we were replicating on the other side was not getting replicated in math. I felt like I had tried everything”.
Last year, that narrative changed. Through a strategic partnership with the Achievement Network (ANet), ISL Uptown saw a remarkable 30% increase in math scores. The breakthrough wasn’t found in a "silver bullet" resource, but in building instructional coherence across the entire campus.
The heart of the instructional shift was a realization: in an immersion setting, math must be treated with the same rigor as any other language. To create this coherence, leadership worked with ANet to institutionalize a rubric that incorporated writing and justification into math instruction.
“We started looking at math from a language arts standpoint,” says Dr. Adelman-Cannon. “Having a rubric, looking at justification of answers... the teachers were going through the same steps as the students. When they saw that working, they were even more inclined to do that process with the students because they had done it themselves.”
While ISL had access to High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIM) and assessments in the past, the partnership with ANet provided the necessary lift to make that data actionable.
Assistant Principal Jairo Maldonado emphasizes that a clear curriculum vision, combined with regular assessments, fosters a culture of accountability. “Data provides us meaningful information that we can analyze. When you analyze it, you find where the gaps are and how we can improve.”
Dr. Adelman-Cannon agrees that coaching was the bridge between having "stuff" and achieving results. “Data alone or HQIM alone is not a silver bullet. It takes that filtering out of what is the most important piece, and that's where the coaching is so helpful.”
Perhaps the most significant impact of the ANet partnership was the shift in leadership capacity. Dr. Adelman-Cannon, a self-described "language person," found the confidence to lead in a subject area outside her expertise.
“Jared [our ANet coach] helped me walk into a room and not necessarily be the math expert, but ask the right questions,” she says. This shift in leadership trickled down to the staff, moving teachers out of their comfort zones and toward high-impact practices.
The true measure of success is found in the students. Dr. Adelman-Cannon recalls an 8th-grade student who had previously struggled and was placed in a math intervention group. After testing out of the group due to his growth, he did the unthinkable: he asked to go back in.
“He wrote me and said, 'No, I want to go back into math because now I realize I can do more,'” she shares. “He actually asked to do more math because now he knows what he's capable of. To me, that says everything.”
As ISL Uptown celebrates its 26th year, the school is no longer just a "language school," it is a school of mastery.
“I want my kids to have mastery and access,” Dr. Adelman-Cannon concludes. “We're in a competitive world, and our kids need to leave here and access education at a high level. High math scores are the door. I don’t want any of them to not have access.”
Our support for schools centers on instruction and guides leaders to operationalize coherence. Learn more about our partnerships with schools on our School Leader page.