Parents and researchers might be pleased with Louisiana’s new accountability scoring system, but a lot of school board members and educrats won’t be.
This week, the state’s Department of Education released academic year 2025 results, times two. It reported school and district performance scores using both the current 150-point metric that separates elementary, middle, and high schools where elementary schools had three components, middle schools four, and high schools five components in score computation, along with new a 100-point scale approved last year based upon the proportion of students who achieve certain benchmarks with high schools having three components and all others two.
Specifically, elementary and middle schools would have 54 percent scored on student growth in math and English, with special attention paid to the lowest achieving students, and 46 percent with student proficiency in math, English, science, and social studies. For high schools, the former would be proportioned at 42 percent and the latter at 33 percent, with the additional component of 25 percent comprised of on-time graduation, readiness on a nationally recognized exam, and preparation to enter the work world or further studies.
While this is clearer, the actual computation is as complex as under the old system. For example, schools will have to compute from the examination scores the changes in them for the lowest quartile of students for an overweighed part of the growth component. Perhaps a bit technical, its construction does have advantages over the old system. For example, the new system attenuates the ability for high schools to apply some gamesmanship to pumping up graduation proportions, a large weight to the sunsetting system.
The greater fidelity to measuring growth, achievement, and the ability to thrive when graduated will cause consternation among elected and appointed school officials, both because raw scores don’t look good and because the defined grade levels by the state make many schools and districts look worse than they do now, even if that more accurately describes their performances. For one thing, with the public so often thinking of an A-F scale on a 0 to 100 basis, with the 150-point scaling producing individual schools well above 100 and a few districts in the mid-90s and above, the perception was these were doing quite well when in fact the best schools were fair-to-middling compared to others nationally.
The simulated scores don’t come close to adhering to a typical grading distribution; keep in mind, for example, to earn 100 as part of the score for, say, growth, every single student would have to show sufficient growth. In fact, at the district level, the highest scoring West Feliciana at 59.4 would be just below “passing” on the intended scale for these evaluations.
The standard scale of an “A” being 90-100 and so on down to “F” being below 60 if applied would drive school board members and school superintendents crazy, so LDOE is phasing in a labeling system with that categorization as the eventual goal. It took simulated scores under the system for 2024 and created a cut point for A in the first ten percent, B the next 20, C at 40, D at 20, and Fs to the bottom ten percent (known as “grading on a curve”). Those raw cut points will remain the same until the A and B categories comprise at least 50 percent of schools or districts, in which all categories will be increased five points until the aspired curve using raw numbers is achieved.
Nevertheless, the new system still will supply plenty of heartburn to local policy-makers. Of the 69 parochial and municipal school districts plus what’s left of the Recovery School District in East Baton Rouge, the new system delivered a letter grade lower than the old for 30. Standardizing the metrics – that is, taking the old system and dividing it by 1.5 to put it also on a 100-point scaling – and comparing showed no school system would have done better under the new scoring. The two that changed the least were the sixth-worst RSD losing only 4.77 standardized points and the best West Feliciana losing 5.73. Under the old scoring the latter was neck-and-neck with Plaquemines (97.7 to 97.6, unstandardized) but under the new Plaquemines lost 13.07, the fifth biggest behind Winn that dropped 13.23 (and from B to C), St. Mary that dropped 13.4 (stayed B), St. Martin that dropped 13.63 (stayed C), and the biggest loser being formerly A-rated Cameron whose 14.73 drop cost it a letter grade.
Undoubtedly the new scoring system provides a more accurate absolute assessment of education quality, aligning more realistically with national data that show great progress for Louisiana students but still average-to-below-average performance compared to all other states. Which is why school board members and local educrats will start a new-scoring-vilification and excuse-mongering campaign almost immediately to deflect from this inconvenient truth.
The fact is, across several metrics, the statewide proportion of students reaching adequacy targets is 43.3 percent, according to the new scoring. Let’s hope collectively educators and policy-makers forgo a shooting-or-discounting-the-messenger approach and instead do the real work necessary to build on success in getting this statistic higher.
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