It was a regular day at LeBlanc Elementary School in Abbeville, with French immersion students answering questions and math classes working through problems.

Then Rahm Emanuel walked through the door.

The former Chicago mayor, White House chief of staff to President Barack Obama and U.S. ambassador to Japan visited LeBlanc Elementary on Thursday as part of a tour he initiated to learn more about Louisiana's recent gains in student achievement.

Emanuel began his tour Wednesday in New Orleans, where he . He said he wanted to see firsthand what Louisiana is doing differently after students across the state made unusual gains following the pandemic.

The interest was sparked in part by a that found Louisiana was the only state in the country to surpass its pre-COVID reading levels. Louisiana students also have surpassed their 2019 performance levels in math.

Vermilion Parish offered Emanuel a closer look at how those gains are playing out inside a school.

LeBlanc Elementary serves about 550 pre-K through fifth-grade students and has focused on high-dose tutoring, early literacy intervention and the Zearn K-8 math curriculum as it works to accelerate student learning.

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Rahm Emanuel, former White House chief of staff, mayor of Chicago and U.S. ambassador to Japan, chats with Vermilion Parish School System administrators and faculty at Leblanc Elementary Thursday, October 1, 2026, in Abbeville, La.

The Louisiana Department of Education reported in July that students in districts using Zearn Math scored about six points higher on the LEAP assessment than students in comparable districts that did not use the curriculum. Zearn uses a “Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract” approach designed to help students build mathematical understanding.

“You know, we’ve had a lot of growth since COVID. We made a huge commitment to high dose tutoring, which is still in place today, and I think that’s one of the reasons that we caught up a lot faster than the rest of the nation,” Vermilion Parish Superintendent Tommy Byler told Emanuel.

Byler showed Emanuel around the school alongside Principal DeEtte Bigot, district supervisor for French Immersion Rachelle Brown and Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Federal Programs Kimberly Etie.

The tour gave Emanuel a look at some of the practices district leaders credit for the parish's academic gains, including the continued use of intensive tutoring and a focus on early literacy.

“The state also made a commitment to the science of reading. I know you’ve been to Mississippi and seen some of that impact there, and I think teaching our teachers to really learn how to teach reading has been an important thing,” Byler told Emanuel.

He has made education a central focus of his national travels this year as he weighs whether to run for president in 2028. He has traveled to Mississippi and other states to examine education programs and talk about what he believes can be replicated nationally. In May, he said he was “very seriously” considering a presidential run but was not ready to make an announcement.

At LeBlanc, Emanuel said the lesson he was taking away was less about one particular program and more about consistency.

“The constant focus on teacher training, the discipline around the curriculum, the consistency — it really starts there,” he said. “Both Louisiana and Mississippi are showing massive gains in reading. You guys have figured out math, and they talked about the Zearn model and the consistency of it, and the culture that’s built around that. That’s what I’m taking away.”

Email Joanna Brown at joanna.brown@theadvocate.com.

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