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Acadia among state’s top districts in LEAP 2016 score gains

Jeannine LeJeune
Crowley Post-Signal
Online Editor

It isn’t every day that one of the Department of Education’s media briefings feature a call out to Acadia Parish, but the parish’s hard work particularly in the past five years, is most definitely paying off.
“Certain parts of our state, over the course of this multiple year transition, have made the adjustments (to the higher standards) at a faster rate,” said Superintendent of Education for the state John White.
In 2012, Acadia Parish saw only about 20 percent of its student testing population score mastery or above. It ranked in the 45th percentile statewide. Fast forward to this spring’s scores and Acadia has made a percentile rankings jump of 41 to make it to the 86th percentile in the state.
“It’s been a slow process, but sometimes that’s the best thing,” said Acadia Parish Superintendent John Bourque. “We did things sure and slow. No one likes change, but we made sure to take the changes in chunks and we made sure the changes were right.”
The new state standards are starting to show in testing that they do, in fact, showcase higher achieving students.
“Acadia ... made dramatic strides when compared to its peers,” said White.
That feat, according to Bourque is a testament to the hard work of the district’s educators, students and school administrators alike.
“It’s a tremendous team effort, from the school board members that let us do things to the backing of the central office all the way to the schools,” he said. “Most important, though, have been our students and our parents who have trusted us with making the right decisions in regard to education.”
The state’s results overall were also encouraging to White.
“It shows progress,” he said during Thursday’s teleconference. “Schools are making the adjustments to the new standards.”
Students improved performance in English language arts (ELA) and math, increasing from 33 percent of all ELA and math tests in those subjects scoring “Mastery” or above in 2015 to 38 percent in 2016 and from 65 percent scoring “Basic” or above in 2015 to 67 percent in 2016. Additionally, the percentage of students scoring “Mastery” or above in science increased at every grade level from 2015 to 2016. The trend indicates that students, educators, and schools are adjusting to higher expectations implemented through a four-year transition period, mirroring a similar trend in other states.
The achievement gap, however, has also become very real in the state through this testing. White stated that it is data like Thursday’s that shows the state needs to make that fact and the groups involved a heavy focal point in its adoption of the Every Student Succeeds Act.
While performance improved among historically disadvantaged student populations, it did not grow at the same rate as the general population thereby growing the gap.
At the “Mastery” level, economically disadvantaged students saw a five percentage point increase, equal to the state increase, from 25 percent in 2015 to 30 percent in 2016. African-American students realized a three percentage point increase in students scoring “Mastery,” from 21 percent in 2015 to 24 percent in 2016.
While overall student performance improved, achievement gaps between peers persist. The achievement gap between African-American students and white students at the “Mastery” level is 26 percentage points. Likewise, the achievement gap at the “Mastery” level between economically disadvantaged students and those who are not economically disadvantaged is 28 percentage points. Both gaps are larger today than they were under less challenging standards, prior to the transition.
“These gaps are not any individual or institution’s fault, but they are unacceptable in an education system,” said White. “They should be an engine of change and upward mobility.”

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