{"id":33910,"date":"2026-02-09T18:04:05","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T18:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bondahx.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/09\/how-a-small-louisiana-school-misled-families-and-thwarted-students-college-dreams\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T18:04:05","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T18:04:05","slug":"how-a-small-louisiana-school-misled-families-and-thwarted-students-college-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bondahx.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/09\/how-a-small-louisiana-school-misled-families-and-thwarted-students-college-dreams\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Small Louisiana School Misled Families and Thwarted Students\u2019 College Dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The story Mike Landry told about his students, who were majority African American, sounded depressingly familiar: poor, raised on the wrong side of the tracks, ignored, forgotten. But it made the rest of their story seem even more inspiring: Through grit, hard work, and help from a hole-in-the-wall private school \u2014 T.M. Landry College Prep in tiny Breaux Bridge, Louisiana \u2014 the students landed spots at Yale, Harvard, Brown, Wellesley and other elite schools.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t the whole story. Several of the school\u2019s students did make it into elite colleges. However, once they enrolled, a significant number of them struggled to maintain their academic status as they realized they had inadequate skills. All they really knew was what they\u2019d memorized through incessant ACT prep drills at T.M. Landry. <\/p>\n

At worst, Landry\u2019s narrative, with its lack of nuance and reliance on old stereotypes of underserved Black children in poor areas, preyed on the very communities he purported to support \u2014 resulting in many gains for himself and his wife, Tracey, but at great personal cost to the students and their families. <\/p>\n

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In their book, \u201cMiracle Children,\u201d two New York Times reporters \u2014 Erica L. Green, a longtime education reporter who now covers the White House, and Katie Benner, an investigative reporter \u2014 explore the duplicity of Landry\u2019s motives and the damage he wrought. <\/p>\n

The book opens with Alex and Ayrton Little, two exceptionally gifted brothers out of T.M. Landry who made it into Stanford and Harvard respectively. Their story is an example of how Landry used his young charges to promote his own false narrative. <\/p>\n

The brothers were featured on \u201cThe Ellen DeGeneres Show,\u201d where they were portrayed as academic phoenixes: \u201cYou were raised by a single mom,\u201d DeGeneres said. \u201cYou were on the verge of being homeless for most of your lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

In truth, though the Littles were indeed raised by a single mother, and at times the family did struggle financially, they weren\u2019t dirt-poor for most of their lives and their academic achievement wasn\u2019t the result of a miraculous transformation at T.M. Landry. Rather, the brothers were high performers at a different, well-established private high school and had transferred to Landry about a year before. <\/p>\n