Peter Cook
As I detailed in a post last week, the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) recently released annual school letter grades and School Performance Scores (SPS) for the 2017-18 school year.
A conversation on Facebook spurred my curiosity to find out how many students were attending A, B, C, D, and F-graded schools in New Orleans.
I pulled February 2018 Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) enrollment data, matched it with school letter grade data for each New Orleans school, and tallied the number of students attending schools at each performance level. (You can see my spreadsheet with this data here.)
Finally, I created a chart showing the number of students attending schools at each letter grade…
A little over two-thirds of New Orleans public school students attended schools graded “C” or better last year. Ten percent were enrolled in “F” schools last year, although that number has likely shrunk, as three of those failing schools (Mahalia Jackson, ReNEW McDonogh City Park, and Sylvanie Williams) closed at the end of the 2017-2018 year.
Read my earlier take on NOLA school performance:
The Grades Are In… | PE + CO
On Thursday, the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) released annual school letter grades and School Performance Scores (SPS) – which are akin to number grades – for the 2017-18 school year. For the first time, the formulas used to measure school performance incorporate students’ growth from year to year on state standardized tests.
Now let’s look at the distribution in 2005…
I then decided to take it a step further and create the same chart for New Orleans students in 2004-2005, the last full school year prior to Hurricane Katrina.
However, there’s a few things that I need to mention about the data. To start, Louisiana’s accountability system didn’t assign letter grades to schools until 2011; back in 2005, schools only received School Performance Scores (SPS). Therefore, I used the 2011 grading scale to assign a letter grade for each New Orleans school in 2004-2005.
The second, more important point is that the performance bar for schools has risen significantly since 2005. Not only has the state adopted a more rigorous set of academic standards in ELA and math based on the Common Core, but the grading scale has shifted, making it more difficult for schools to get an “A”.
Furthermore, this year, LDOE stopped grading schools on a curve used to ease the transition to the state’s new standards. Previously, schools received SPS points for students who scored “Basic” or above on the state’s standardized tests. Now, students have to achieve “Mastery” or above to be counted in their school’s SPS score. In short, if New Orleans schools in 2005 were judged by today’s performance standards, the number of “F” schools would be much higher.
Finally, the enrollment data used for the chart below comes from the October 2004 MFP count.
With that said, here’s how many students were enrolled at schools at each letter grade in 2005…
This chart illustrates how dismal the situation was for New Orleans’ public schools in 2005. Nearly two-thirds of the city’s students – more than 39,000 kids – were stuck in failing schools. Only 16% were enrolled in schools graded “C” or higher.
Clearly much has changed in the past thirteen years. While we still have too many kids in “D” and “F” schools, not only are more kids attending better schools, but they’re performing at a much higher level.
That’s something people said couldn’t be done. We proved them wrong.
