A Spotlight on Leading Issues
The Landscape of Failure.
In 1998, the year before Louisiana’s nationally recognized School Accountability System was fully put in place, the state required school systems to publicly report School Performance Scores for the bottom 20% of schools. Why? Because even as the School Accountability System was gearing up to go statewide, it was clear immediate action was needed from local school boards to address problems with the state’s lowest performing schools.
Unfortunately, since that time, many of these same Academically Unacceptable schools have changed little. All of them are high-poverty schools where a majority of students come from low-income conditions. The majority of these chronically failed schools are in New Orleans—though there are pockets of them in many other places.
While it is a significant achievement for Louisiana that the total number of K-12 low-performing schools has fallen (from 632 to 522), 170 of these remain dismally low in academic outcomes for the state’s at-risk students. Some of these schools are actually “in decline” with scores dropping. The current 170 failing schools labeled Academically Unacceptable are scattered across rural parishes and inner cities—with 40% in Orleans Parish alone. The other large urban districts—Jefferson, East Baton Rouge and Caddo—have 7%, 12%, and 11% respectively.
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