public school performance in new orleans · 2 public school performance in new orleans: a...

A SUPPLEMENT TO THE 2008 STATE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IN NEW ORLEANS REPORT

Public School Performance in New Orleans

A report prepared by:The Scott S. Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives at Tulane University

This Supplement to the 2008 State of Public Education in New Orleans Report was prepared by:

The Scott S. Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives at Tulane University

The Cowen Institute, founded in March 2007, is an action-oriented think-tank that actively addresses the issues impeding student achievement by designing and advancing innovative, high-impact policies and programs. Using a multidisciplinary approach, we are pioneering a new model for the role of universities in the transformation of public education.

January 2009

1

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ...............................................................................2

Chapter 1: An Overview of School Accountability in the United States ...............................................................................4

Chapter 2: Louisiana’s Public School Accountability System ......8

Chapter 3: School Performance in New Orleans ........................... 12

Appendix:

School by School Performance in New Orleans .......................20

Endnotes .............................................................................................22

Public School Performance in New OrleansA SUPPLEMENT TO THE 2008 STATE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IN NEW ORLEANS REPORT

Publ ic School Performance in New Orleans : A Supplement to the 2008 Report2

Executive Summary

To put this 10-point increase into perspective, New Orleans public schools also improved by about 10 points in the three years between 2002 and 2005; however, no major disaster occurred during that period. Indeed, considering that many students came back to the city after Katrina having spent time out of school and suffering from the trauma of displacement, this increase in overall performance is promising.

At the same time, it is unclear how similar the current population of students is to the student population before the storm. Because it was harder for poor New Orleanians to return to the city after Hurricane Katrina, the proportion of families living in extreme poverty in New Orleans has declined according to US Census Bureau estimates. It is possible that part of the increase in achievement is due to the loss of some of the poorest and most challenged students that attended public schools before Katrina.

It is difficult to compare scores for different schools in New Orleans because the context from one school to the next is very different.

■ Following Hurricane Katrina, the school system was split by the state takeover of failing schools.

■ Over 100 low-performing New Orleans schools were placed into the state-run Recovery School District (RSD). Some schools became open-admission charter schools, others were opened as RSD-run schools, and some remain closed.

■ Higher-performing schools that were not taken over, many of which had some form of selective admissions, were either chartered or continued to be operated by the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB).

■ Because schools were assigned to one of the two post-storm systems, RSD and OPSB, based on their previous academic performance, it is not useful or valid to expect similar performance from OPSB and RSD schools, at least in the near term. They serve, on average, very different groups of students.

■ Consequently, though the district performance score (DPS) of the entire district if it still existed would have been 66.4, the RSD’s score was 51.4 while the OPSB scored 96.1.

The performance of school districts in Louisiana is measured by a district performance score. The district performance score (DPS) sums up the performance of students in a school district on a variety of state standardized tests and a few other indicators, like attendance, into a single number. If schools in New Orleans were still in one district, their district performance score would be 66.4 for the 2007-2008 school year. While this is low compared to the state performance score of 86.3, this represents a significant increase of nearly 10 points from the district’s pre-Katrina score of 56.9 in the 2004-2005 school year.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

2008

2005

2004

2003

2002SCO

RES

BY

YEAR

66.4

56.9

51.2

50.1

46.4

District Performance Scores for All NOLA Schools

Performance Score

Publ ic School Performance in New Orleans : A Supplement to the 2008 Report 3

Within each district, there were also significant differences between the average performance of charter and traditional schools.

■ Like districts, individual schools receive a school performance score (SPS) based on student performance on state tests and other indicators.

■ In both the OPSB and the RSD, charter schools had higher average performance scores than traditional district-run schools.

■ Within the OPSB, charters tend to be more selective than district-run schools, which explains a part of their higher performance.

■ Within the RSD, charters and district-run schools both serve similar student demographics in terms of ethnicity and poverty.

■ However, some key differences remain:– RSD-run schools have higher student mobility rates

and serve a higher proportion of special education students than RSD charters.

– Parents and teachers in RSD charters reported higher rates of satisfaction with their schools than their RSD-run counterparts in Cowen Institute surveys. This could indicate that RSD charters are more effective at educating students.

In spite of their lower absolute scores, school perfor-mance scores grew more for RSD schools than for OPSB schools between the 2006-2007 school year and the 2007-2008 school year.

The promising news: the average performance for every school type in New Orleans grew significantly over the past two years.

ALL LOUISIANA

ALL NOLA

RSD

OPSBSCHO

OL D

ISTR

ICT 86.3

66.4

51.4

96.1

2008 Performance Score Comparison

0 20 40 60 80 100Performance Score

In general, it is hard to know at this point what accounts for different school outcomes without more detailed information about the operating environment of individ-ual schools and the performance of individual students.

The abolishment of school attendance zones has allowed more students and parents to choose among a variety of public school options. Because schools in New Orleans now recruit students from across the city, it is more difficult to know what skill levels students bring to a school versus what a school imparts to them. In addition, more students are self-selecting

into certain types of schools, making it that much more dif-ficult to identify the key determinants of school performance.

That said, it is very promising that schools are improv-ing across the board in New Orleans. More information is needed, however, before we can understand why schools are improving and identify those practices and models that work. Finally, the success or failure of public education reforms in New Orleans will not be fully evident until more information becomes available in the years ahead.

Conclusion:

AVERAGE SCHOOL PERFORMANCE SCORE GROWTH BY SCHOOL TYPE

AVER

AGE

SCHO

OL P

ERFO

RMAN

CE S

CORE

(SPS

)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

ALL NOLA OPSB CHARTERS OPSB-RUN RSD CHARTERS RSD-RUN

2005

2007

2007 20

08

2007

2008

2007

2008

2007

2008

2008

+10.9

+7.1

+8.3

+13.3

+12.9


Chapter 1: An Overview of School Accountability in the United States

Educational Accountability in the United States before No Child Left Behind

Standardized testing is the primary component of most school accountability systems. By using student test scores, it is possible to compare and track the performance of indi-vidual students as well as racial and income-level subgroups, classrooms, schools, districts, and states. Standardized tests are used to assess how well students have learned what they are supposed to know at each grade level and can be adminis-tered at different points in the school year to evaluate student progress. Good test scores may indicate that schools have fulfilled their duty to educate students.

Standardized tests have been used extensively over the past century, though their importance and focus have changed over time. Educational measurement first became popular in the early part of the 20th century, as education began to be analyzed using factory models that employed quantita-tive measures and valued efficiency.1 After World War II, the intensification of the Cold War led to concern about intellec-tual competition with the Soviet Union. The 1957 launch of the Soviet space satellite Sputnik, in particular, led to wor-ries that the United States was not as advanced as the Soviet Union in math and science. As a result, policymakers pres-sured schools to demonstrate academic improvement in order to ensure that the United States did not lose the space race.2

In the 1960s, the federal government began to take on a more significant role in public education. Congress passed the landmark Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society initiatives. ESEA focused on improving educational opportu-nities for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, includ-ing low-income students and non-native English speakers.3 As more federal funds began to flow to local education agen-cies in the 1960s, testing continued to increase due to federal evaluation requirements.4

Debates about the educational effects of school funding, with standardized test scores as the main measure of success or failure, also emerged in the 1960s. The 1966 Equality of Edu-cational Opportunity report (frequently called the “Coleman Report” for its author) focused attention on the difference in performance between black and white students. The report found that schools were highly segregated by race in the late 1960s and that there were significant gaps in achievement between black and white students. Controversially, the report found that “school resources had surprisingly little effect on educational outcomes once family background was con-trolled.”5 Later studies refined this finding, asserting that how resources are used is more important to achievement than the relative quantity of funding.6 While the civil rights move-ment and the Great Society emphasized equalizing school resources between white and black (and wealthy and poor) schools, the research that these movements inspired indicated that resources were not the only, or even the main, problem. The new accountability model that began to develop focused more heavily on equality of “outputs” (student performance) as opposed to equality of “inputs” (school funding).

The accountability movement in the 1970s further broad-ened the use of student testing.7 In addition to an increasing interest in school outputs as measured by tests, higher school spending led to calls for proof that public investments were paying off.8 The slowdown of the U.S. economy, combined with a voter backlash against school funding formulas de-signed to equalize resources across low-income and affluent districts, led to political scrutiny of education spending. Within this climate, the modern education accountability movement developed, strongly influenced by the new focus on outputs. The movement defined accountability to encom-pass a number of new issues in education including: modern management and budgeting techniques; measurable gains in student achievement; the elimination of bias resulting from race, ethnicity, sex, or income; and transparency regarding school effectiveness.9


In 1983, a presidential education commission led by Educa-tion Secretary Bill Bennett released the influential report A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. The report argued that the nation’s schools were failing and called for fundamental reform.10 According to A Nation at Risk, 13 percent of all 17-year-olds in the United States were functionally illiterate, only 20 percent could write a per-suasive essay, and only 33 percent could solve a several-step mathematics problem.11 The report also found that school content had become diluted, American schools used class time ineffectively, and that teaching was not attracting good applicants.12 The commission recommended adopting more rigorous and measurable standards, extending the school day and year, improving teacher preparation, and using standard-ized testing to evaluate educational programs.13

A Nation at Risk is frequently cited by school reformers as a critical document in drawing public attention to the prob-lems of low-performing schools. The report also influenced the Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA), the 1994 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). IASA required states to have content and per-formance standards, annual assessments aligned with those standards, and an accountability system to identify schools whose students did not achieve the standards.14 However, only a handful of states, including Louisiana, ever came into compliance with IASA mandates by the time that the No Child Left Behind Act was passed.

The No Child Left Behind Act

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) is a stan-dards-based education reform law which is another reauthori-zation of ESEA and is highly influenced by the accountability movement’s focus on testing as a measurable output. NCLB requires that each state develop content standards in English/Language Arts (ELA), math, and science. The act also re-quires that states test students in reading and math each year in grades three through eight and at least once during grades ten through twelve. Students must also be tested in science not less than once in grades three through five, six through nine, and ten through twelve. As a result of NCLB, the number of annual assessments that the federal government requires a state to administer has increased from six in 2003 to 14 in 2006 and to 17 in 2008.15 While state tests must be aligned with state academic content and achievement stan-dards, states have the authority to design both the standards and the tests. Because states set their own standards, write their own tests, and report their own proficiency, critics have noted that writing an easier test or lowering the definition of proficiency is the easiest way to make a state’s students seem more proficient.16

Launch of Soviet Space Satellite SputnikThe launch of Sputnik led to worries that the United States was not as advanced as the Soviet Union in math and science. As a result, policymakers began to pressure schools to show demonstrable improvement to ensure that the United States did not lose the space race.

Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)ESEA focused on improving educational opportunities for students from disadvan-taged backgrounds, including low-income students and English language learners, by authorizing federal grants to schools that served these populations.

Publication of A Nation at RiskThis report, released by a presidential committee led by Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, argued that the nation’s schools were failing and called for fundamental reform. A Nation at Risk is frequently cited by school reformers as a critical document in drawing public attention to the problems of low-performing schools.

Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA)IASA required states to have content and performance standards, annual assessments aligned with those standards, and an accountability system to identify schools whose students did not achieve the standards. Very few states complied with this mandate.

No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)NCLB requires that each state develop content standards in English/Language Arts (ELA), math, and science, regularly test students in these subjects, and address their achievement gaps in academic performance between students of various ethnic, economic, English proficiency, and disability subgroups.

1965

1957

1983

1994

2001

Timeline of Federal Education Accountability Initiatives


NCLB requires states to address the difference in academic performance between students of various ethnic, economic, English proficiency, and disability subgroups (also known as “achievement gaps”). Rather than simply allowing a high percentage of students to perform proficiently, NCLB re-quires that each and every student test at the proficient level by 2014. To prove this, schools, districts, and states need to show improvement for their disadvantaged student sub-groups as well as for their student bodies as a whole. While retaining ESEA’s focus on improving education for disadvan-taged children, NCLB requires evidence that education for all children is improving.17

One of the most complicated parts of NCLB is its require-ment that all student subgroups, as well as schools, districts, and states as a whole, achieve Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) on a series of academic performance goals. The annual goals that states set are based on making progress toward proficien-cy for all students by 2014 in ELA, math, and science. Goals are also set for the progress of student subgroups. Though schools have had difficulty making AYP for a number of reasons, one-third of the schools nationally that failed to make AYP in 2003-04 did so because subgroups of students with disabilities or Limited English Proficiency did not make adequate progress on state tests.18

Standardized Testing: Support, Objections, and Alternatives

Testing has become prevalent as a tool for holding students, teachers, schools, and districts accountable for student learn-ing. Some proponents admit that using standardized testing to ensure accountability is not an ideal solution. However, the alternative is often social promotion policies which can promote, and even graduate from high school, students who remain functionally illiterate and innumerate.19 A fundamen-tal assumption underlying test-based accountability is that it is “necessary for ensuring that school personnel commit themselves to the goal of improving student achievement” either because it informs teachers better than other methods, or because the “use of rewards and sanctions is critical for motivating teachers and principals.”20 One of the assump-tions of NCLB is that mandatory testing will serve a mo-tivational and symbolic purpose in addition to measuring performance.21

Test results can reassure parents and the public that students have achieved a certain standard when they move to the next grade or graduate. Test scores can also help establish if US students are competitive internationally.22 Without some standardized testing and measurement mechanism, it is

difficult for people outside of the classroom to gauge stu-dent progress accurately. Tests created by individual teachers are less generalizable and more idiosyncratic. In addition, teachers are more likely to consider behavior and perceived effort in addition to knowledge and learning when assessing students, making student grades less likely to reflect the same level of subject mastery across different classes and schools.23 By contrast, proponents argue that standardized tests are “carefully constructed by experts, machine scored, relatively easy to administer, inexpensive, and…objective.”24

Testing can also enhance communication within schools and in the broader society about student achievement. In a large study, researchers found that standardized tests increased communication between parents and teachers regarding students’ strengths and weaknesses.25 Proponents assert that tests can also be used to measure and communicate the effectiveness of various educational policies and reforms.26 Test results also provide a “concise index of teacher performance.”27 Finally, taxpayers and their representatives want to see a return on public investments in education. Test scores are relatively easy for the public to understand compared to more complex measures of student learning and school effectiveness.28

The increased focus on testing brought about by NCLB and the accountability movement also has many detractors. Criti-cisms focus on the limitations and quality of tests, testing bias, and the value of tests in understanding and measuring educational improvement.

Critics argue that it is difficult to measure higher-level and critical thinking skills with multiple choice tests. When multiple choice tests have high stakes, this can encourage teachers to “teach to the test” in a narrow sense, restricting the breadth and depth of teaching and learning.29 In addi-tion, test results are a snapshot of one day’s performance on material that is learned over a year or more. For this reason, critics argue that tests cannot assess the diversity of skills that students learn over time. Writing a test that truly assesses what it promises to measure is very difficult, and not all tests are of a high quality.30 Critics also doubt the reliability of tests because student performance can be affected by factors like testing environment and domestic or social stresses.31

Other critics have asserted that standardized tests are biased by race, ethnicity, gender, or socio-economic class.32 Critics allege that students who have cultural backgrounds different from the test writers’ may be more likely to suffer when tests have high stakes. Further, standardized assessments fre-quently test students on the knowledge that they bring with them to school and not on what they are taught in a class, both in terms of the content and the cultural assumptions


in the questions.33 Educational resources at home, such as books and the internet, play a major role in students’ scores. Indeed, parents’ educational levels are one of the most signifi-cant predictors of student test scores.34

Critics also make the argument that state tests do not provide valuable information to teachers or schools. Most state tests are only administered once a year and scores are not released until the end of the school year. As a result, scores cannot be used to retool instructional strategies or intervene with failing students during the school year. Likewise, the following year’s students may have different instructional needs.35 Learning a student’s previous scores is not necessarily helpful because, while grade level expectations (GLEs) do accumulate, each year’s focus is different.

Specific criticisms focus on the high stakes that tests often hold for students. Students can be denied diplomas and retained for failing a test, but students are not solely respon-sible for their lack of knowledge. Adults (educators, parents, and even the wider public) also share in the blame for low academic performance.36 In addition, a number of organi-zations representing testing experts have criticized the use of high-stakes testing. The American Educational Research Association (AERA), the American Psychological Association (APA), and the National Council on Measurement in Educa-

tion set standards for educational testing and have stated that “a decision… that will have a major impact on a student should not be made on the basis of a single test score.”37

While standardized tests can provide valuable information for students, parents, teachers, administrators, policy makers, and the public, many experts assert that they should be one among several measures of success. Alternative assessments, also called authentic assessments, include portfolios of student work designed to show mastery of more complex skills than multiple choice tests can assess. Alternative assessments allow students to demonstrate critical skills through a number of different methods: performances, demonstrations (e.g., science experiments), exhibitions of work, oral presentations, and others.38 Generally these are scored on rubrics that are standardized across a school, district, or state.39

Supporters of alternative assessment note that these types of assessments measure skills that are much more likely to be used by students in their lives outside of school, whereas the skills tested on multiple choice exams have limited usefulness. Detractors argue that the scores are much more difficult to standardize and analyze statistically. Authentic assessments are also considerably more time-intensive and costly to administer.


Chapter 2: Louisiana’s Public School Accountability System

The Development of Louisiana’s Educational Accountability System

In response to the national movement for increased edu-cational accountability, the Louisiana Legislature created the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) in 1986. In February of that year, U.S. Secretary of Education Bill Bennett released a report ranking the 50 states and the District of Columbia on measures of student achievement. In the report, Louisiana’s high school graduation rate ranked 50th in the nation at 56.7 percent. Of the 28 states that were ranked based on ACT scores, Louisiana came in at number 27, with an average score of 16.5.40

Despite these indicators of low student achievement, students performed well on the state achievement tests that were given at the time. In 1986, 73 and 78 percent of Louisiana 5th graders passed the Language Arts and Math portions of the state test, respectively. Passage rates in other grades ranged from 79 to 92 percent.41 Clearly, the tests given at the time were poor predictors of future high school graduation and college readiness.

The LEAP legislation established mandatory state tests for students in grades 4 and 8 and in high school. Students in other grades were given the national California Achievement Test (CAT). The Legislature and the state Board of Elemen-tary and Secondary Education (BESE) also required that stu-dents pass the high school LEAP test, also referred to as the Graduate Exit Exam (GEE), in order to graduate.42 The first GEE was given in 1989, and students from the class of 1991 were the first to be required to pass the test in order to gradu-ate.43 Over the next decade, the state expanded and refined its testing policies. In 1997, BESE approved new, tougher curriculum standards and rewrote the LEAP tests to corre-spond.44 In addition, students in grades that took the CAT began taking the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) in 1998.45

Critics of the GEE had long argued that passing students through every grade only to be told that they could not graduate because of failing the test represented a problem with the accountability system.46 In response, the Louisi-ana Department of Education began developing a program that would retain 4th and 8th graders who failed the LEAP tests.47 Beginning in the 1999-2000 school year, 4th and 8th grade students had to pass both the Mathematics and English/Language Arts (ELA) sections of the LEAP test in order to progress to grades 5 and 9. Passing and failing scores were based on a new five-category system created by BESE. Students’ scores could be unsatisfactory, approaching basic, basic, proficient, or advanced. Passing meant achieving a score of approaching basic or above.48

Before the new high-stakes testing plan went into effect, opponents began to act. The group Parents for Educational Justice challenged the state’s plan in court. Their legal representative stated that the group objected to the policy because it made “the test the be-all and end-all of public education. ...The entire burden of accountability for the educational failure of Louisiana is being placed on the backs of these little kids. That is unfair and that is punitive.”49 The group questioned the wisdom of what it viewed as punishing children for the failure of teachers and administrators to do their jobs. In 2000, Parents for Educational Justice filed for a temporary injunction to prevent students who failed the LEAP from being held back.50 The lawsuit was dismissed.51

Concerned parents were not the only ones who registered their unhappiness with BESE’s new plan. The Orleans Parish School Board passed a resolution in February of 2000, by a vote of 4 to 3, citing their objection to high-stakes testing for 4th and 8th graders.52 Board President Gail Glapion also announced her support for Parents for Educational Justice.53 In 2001, two New Orleans area state legislators attempted to pass a bill through the House Education Committee that would abolish the rule allowing retention based on LEAP scores. The bill was overwhelmingly rejected by the committee.54


Despite these protests, high-stakes testing in the 4th and 8th grades was implemented beginning in the 1999-2000 school year. The expansion of high-stakes testing was part of a larger accountability framework adopted by BESE in 1998, called the Louisiana School and District Accountability System. The system set performance growth targets for schools and developed a report card system to inform the public about school performance. The report card included a School Per-formance Score (SPS) that was primarily based on test scores and was used to set performance goals. The accountability plan also called for corrective actions to be imposed on schools that failed to meet their targets, including allowing students to choose a new school or shutting down a failing school.55 Louisiana’s new accountability system made it one of a minority of states that fully complied with the federal Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA).56

The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) set additional federal requirements for state accountability systems. Because of its compliance with preceding federal laws, Louisiana was able to maintain most of the original elements of its account-

ability system; NCLB mandates were added on top of the state requirements. Among the most important changes, the federal government now required that all students be profi-cient by 2014, while Louisiana had formerly required that the average of all students be proficient by 2019.57 NCLB also required annual, rather than biennial, progress reports and required that Louisiana report on, and be held accountable for, the progress of student subgroups. Sanctions for under-performing schools were also expanded.58

NLCB also required annual standards-based testing for stu-dents in grades 3 through 8 and once for students in grades 9 through 12. While the LEAP and GEE taken by 4th, 8th, 10th, and 11th graders were criterion referenced tests (i.e., matched to the state content standards), the Iowa tests taken in other grades were norm-referenced (i.e., general skills tests used to rank students against the skill levels of students across the country). In response to this mandate, the state created the iLEAP, which is a combination of criterion referenced questions based on the state’s curriculum and norm-refer-enced questions taken from the Iowa tests. The iLEAP allows the state to comply with NCLB while retaining its ability to compare Louisiana students with other students taking the Iowa Tests.59

In response to the national movement for increased educational accountability, the Louisiana Legislature created the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP).

The first LEAP Graduate Exit Exam (GEE) was given in 1989, and students from the class of 1991 were the first to be required to pass the test in order to graduate.

BESE approved new, tougher curriculum standards and rewrote the LEAP tests to correspond.

BESE adopted an accountability framework called the Louisiana School and District Accountability System which set biennial growth targets for schools and developed a report card system to inform the public about school performance.

Beginning in this year, 4th and 8th grade students were required to pass both the Mathematics and English/Language Arts sections of the LEAP test in order to progress to grades 5 and 9.

NCLB set additional federal requirements for state accountability systems. The most im-portant change required all LA students to be proficient by 2014. Previously, an average of all students had to reach proficiency by 2019.

Due to the devastation and displacement caused by Hurricane Katrina, BESE tempo-rarily suspended the retention policy for 4th and 8th graders who failed the LEAP.

Due to NCLB mandate, grades 3, 5, 6, 7, and 9 began taking the iLEAP test.

1989

1997

1986

1998

1999

2001

2005

2006

The History of the Louisiana Educational Accountability System

“ Among the most important changes, the federal government now required that all students be proficient by 2014, while Louisiana had formerly required that the average of all students be proficient by 2019.”


How the Louisiana Accountability System Currently Works

While student progress is assessed by individual test scores, schools are given a composite score, the School Performance Score (SPS), based on test scores on all of the state tests (LEAP, iLEAP, and GEE), drop-out rates, and attendance. Beginning in 2006, K-6 schools were given an SPS with 90 percent of the score based upon test scores and 10 percent based on attendance. K-8 schools received an SPS based on 90 percent test scores and 10 percent divided between attendance and drop out rates. High school performance scores are calculated based mainly on test scores (70 percent) but with a 30 percent weight given to the school’s cohort graduation index. The graduation index is based on a cohort of students that enters the ninth grade in a given year and assigns the school points based on their graduation outcomes (e.g., 0 points for a drop-out, 90 points for a GED, and 120 points for graduating with a regular diploma).60

School Performance Scores range from 0.0 to either 236.4 or 266.7 (depending on the grade configuration of the school). A school’s Baseline SPS is calculated by averaging the previ-ous two years of school performance data and is used to give a school a performance rating label. Schools with a Baseline SPS of 140 or above receive a rating of five stars. Schools with an SPS of 60.0 to 79.9 receive one star. Schools with an SPS below 60, as of 2007, are deemed “Academically Unac-ceptable.” After NCLB, the state set a target of having all schools reach an SPS of 120 or above by 2014.61

Each year, schools receive a Growth SPS which is based on just one year of test scores. This score is compared to the pre-vious year’s Baseline SPS (which is based on two years of test scores) to determine the school’s growth. Growth SPS and scores for student subgroups are used to determine whether or not a school makes its Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under NCLB. If schools fail to make AYP for specific student subgroups, then they are subject to an escalating series of sanctions for each consecutive year that they do not meet their goals.

Pros and Cons of Louisiana’s Current Accountability System

It is difficult to say how well a school should be able to perform on a given battery of tests with a given school population. Louisiana and other states, due in part to the requirements of NCLB, look at two different measures of achievement: a school’s absolute performance on tests in a given year and a school’s growth in performance over two or more years. Both measures have advantages and disadvantages.

Absolute performance indicates how well a group of students is performing in a given year. Generally speaking, schools with more affluent students whose parents have more education achieve higher absolute scores than schools whose students are less affluent and come from less educated families. This can unfairly label low-income schools with lower scores as inferior, as absolute scores do not necessarily reflect the school’s contribution to a child’s learning. Very simply, absolute scores reflect a combination of how much knowledge students bring with them to school and how much knowledge schools are contributing to students. Sorting out the influence of each one, however, is very difficult. Even so, absolute scores can gauge whether schools are performing below a basic level of quality for which society has determined that there is no excuse. Regardless of student disadvantages, a very low absolute score can signal that school efforts are below what the state and the public can (or should) reasonably expect.

Another way to think about student achievement and school performance is to look at growth in test scores. Growth has the advantage of reflecting how much students are learning over time at a given school as opposed to what level of ability students bring with them. However, most states, including Louisiana, look at growth by comparing the test scores of different cohorts of students. For example, the LEAP scores of 4th graders from one year are typically compared to LEAP scores for 4th graders in the following year. Different cohorts

Grades K-8

LEAP, iLEAP, LAA-1 and 2 (90% K-8)* Grades 3-8

Attendance (10% K-6, 5% 7-8) Grades K-8

Dropout Rate (5% 7-8) Grades 7-8

Grades 9-12

LEAP, iLEAP, LAA-1 and 2 (70%)* Grades 9-12

Cohort Graduation Index (30%) Grade 12

School Performance Score Weighting and Calculation

*LAA-1 and 2 are given to students in special education.

Performance Label Corresponding SPS Score Range

Five Stars H H H H H 140.0 and above

Four Stars H H H H 120.0 to 139.9

Three Stars H H H 100 to 119.9

Two Stars H H 80.0 to 99.9

One Star H 60.0 to 79.9

Academically Unacceptable Below 60.0

Academic Performance Labels for Schools


of 4th graders, even in the same school, can bring with them very different levels of knowledge that have nothing to do with how well a school is teaching.

School performance scores (SPS) are used by the state to assess a school’s growth. SPS is a better measure of growth because it takes multiple grades into account for any given school, making it more likely that a given cohort’s scores will be captured year-over-year. However, SPS has some impor-tant drawbacks. Though multiple grades are included, school performance scores do not take into account which students leave or enter a school. Urban school districts like New Orleans tend to have very high student mobility. This means that the make up of any cohort is likely to change consider-ably over several years. Because a cohort may include many students who were not in the school in the previous year, the cohort’s growth may not be entirely reflective of what a school has accomplished.

Even so, school performance scores and their change over time provide a general sense of student ability in a particu-lar school as measured by standardized tests (though not necessarily of the same students in every year). Because performance is highly correlated with family income, it is reasonable to assume that a school with an open admissions policy and a high level of student poverty that also has a high SPS is probably doing something right. A school with a low SPS relative to its level of student poverty is probably doing something wrong. In between these extremes, however, test scores may not be indicative of school quality beyond chart-ing a school or district’s general trajectory (i.e., improvement, stagnation, or decline). Schools should also be compared to their peers in terms of student demographics in order to make reasonable comparisons. Comparing the SPS of a selective admissions school with a relatively low poverty rate against an open admissions school with a relatively high pov-erty rate reveals little about the contribution of either school to student learning.

“ Comparing the SPS of a selective admissions school with a relatively low poverty rate against an open admissions school with a relatively high poverty rate reveals little about the contribution of either school to student learning.”


Chapter 3: School Performance in New Orleans

Before Hurricane Katrina, public schools in New Orleans regularly scored below the Louisiana average on the state’s standardized tests. Orleans Parish was the second lowest scoring school district in Louisiana in the 2004-2005 school year, ranking 67th out of 68 districts. If all public schools in New Orleans were still in one district, it would rank 65th out of 68 districts in the 2007-08 school year. In addition, Louisiana regularly ranks near the bottom of states nationally on a variety of national tests. On the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), sometimes referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card,” Louisi-ana 4th and 8th graders scored between 43rd and 50th out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia on reading and math. Finally, the United States as a whole does not rank

among the top industrialized nations of the world on student performance. On tests conducted by the Program for Inter-national Student Assessment (PISA) in industrialized nations since 2000, American 15 year-olds ranked 15th out of 43 countries in reading, 29th out of 57 countries in science, and 35th out of 57 countries in math. Though standardized tests can never tell the whole story of student knowledge, they do give a general sense of how public school students compare to their peers across the state, the country, and the world. These results lead to the inevitable conclusion that public schools in New Orleans rank near the bottom in a state that ranks near the bottom in a country that is far from leading the industri-alized world in terms of student learning.

State, National, and International Academic Rankings

Rank District Performance Score

1 Zachary Community School District 112.6

2 West Feliciana Parish 105.9

3 St. Tammany Parish 105.7

16 Calcasieu Parish 96.8

17 Orleans Parish 96.1

18 Catahoula Parish 94.5

65 City of Bogalusa School District 66.8

66 City of Baker School District 65.9

67 Madison Parish 61.1

68 St. Helena Parish 57.4

69 Recovery School District 51.4

All New Orleans Schools 66.4

ORLEANS VS LA

LOUISIANA VS USA

USA VS WORLD

2008 District Performance Scores


Rank District Score

1 Massachusetts 236

2 New Jersey 231

3 New Hampshire 229

48 California 209

49 Mississippi 208

50 Louisiana 207

51 District of Columbia 197

Rank District Score

1 Finland 546

2 Canada 534

3 New Zealand 529

14 France 505

15 United States 504

16 Denmark 497

Rank District Score

1 Massachusetts 273

2 Vermont 273

3 Montana 271

43 Arizona 255

44 Louisiana 253

45 Nevada 252

45 Alabama 252

Rank District Score

1 Finland 563

2 Hong Kong (China) 542

3 Canada 534

28 Latvia 490


30 Slovak Republic 488

Rank District Score

1 Massachusetts 252

2 New Jersey 249

3 New Hampshire 249

45 Nevada 232

46 Louisiana 230

47 California 230

48 Alabama 229

Rank District Score

1 Taiwan 549

2 Finland 548

3 Hong Kong (China) 547

34 Azerbaijan 476


36 Croatia 467

Rank District Score

1 Massachusetts 298

2 Minnesota 292

3 North Dakota 292

42 Arkansas 274

43 Louisiana 272

44 Nevada 271

45 California 270

ORLEANS VS LA

LOUISIANA VS USA

USA VS WORLD

ORLEANS VS LA

LOUISIANA VS USA

USA VS WORLD

4TH GRADE READING

15 YEAR-OLDS: READING (2000)

8TH GRADE READING

15 YEAR-OLDS: SCIENCE (2006)

4TH GRADE MATH

15 YEAR-OLDS: MATH (2006)

8TH GRADE MATH

2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)

Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)


In addition to having some of the state’s lowest scores on standardized tests, public school students in New Orleans also have some of the highest poverty rates in the state. Seventy-three percent of New Orleans public school stu-dents qualified for free lunch in 2005, indicating that their household income is less than 130 percent of the federal poverty line.62 Fifty-three percent of public school students in Louisiana as a whole were eligible for free lunch in 2005, compared with a national rate of about 30 percent. On aver-age, a student’s test scores are correlated with his or her fam-ily’s income and level of education. The percent of students who are eligible for free lunch is a strong predictor of school performance scores in Louisiana, as it is across the country. In Louisiana schools with grades kindergarten through 8th

grade, where the number of students who qualify for free lunch tends to be the most accurate, the general relationship between a school’s level of poverty and absolute performance is clear (as seen below.)

These potential reasons are not excuses for accepting low performance as inevitable. In certain cases, high poverty schools have and do achieve at and above state and national averages for school performance. Students themselves are not the problem. However, the disadvantages poor students bring with them to school, combined with the lower quality of many (though certainly not all) schools in low-income com-munities, have led to long term cycles of poor performance and low expectations for poor and minority students.

2005 POVERTY LEVELS AND SCHOOL PERFORMANCE IN LOUISIANAThe Relationship Between Free Lunch Eligibility and School

Performance Scores in Louisiana’s K-8 Schools

PERCENT OF A SCHOOL’S STUDENTS ELIGIBLE FOR FREE LUNCH

AVER

AGE

SCHO

OL P

ERFO

RMAN

CE S

CORE

(SPS

)

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

0%-20%

127.3

107.1

97.1

84.4

70.3

20%-40% 40%-60% 60%-80% 80%-100%

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