"Leslie Rosenthal Jacobs" is an award-winning education reform advocate, business executive and philanthropist. Born in New Orleans, she built her family's small, independent insurance agency into one of the largest in the South, before merging the Rosenthal Agency with Hibernia National Bank (now Capital One). For the last 25 years, she has been a passionate voice for education reform, serving initially as an elected member of the Orleans Parish School Board and then as a member of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education/State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE). She is also the founder of "Educate Now/Educate Now!", a non-profit dedicated to continuing the broad, post-Katrina reforms of New Orleans public schools she helped institute and execute as a member of the BESE.

More Leslie Jacobs on Wikipedia.

Our fourth-graders were very successful. They had just about the same passing rate as our eighth-graders, even though they had to achieve at a higher standard. We have to figure out how to have the same success at eighth grade.

206

This is the first negative trend line we have had in anything since accountability began.

172

I would be surprised if they get 10,000 students this year. I'll be surprised if they end up with 25,000 next year. A tremendous amount of people are out of town where they're likely to find better housing, better schools and better jobs.

163

I encourage y'all to organize yourselves, to organize your constituents.

131