Article Image Alt Text

So far, Acadia PARCC scores on par with state

Jeannine LeJeune
Online Editor
Crowley Post-Signal

State Superintendent of Education John White may not be ready to compare results, explicitly, from PARCC to 2014’s LEAP testing, but at the very least, Acadia remains on par with the state average.
“The preliminary results are looking good, overall,” said Acadia Parish Superintendent John Bourque. “We’re excited now and feel confident.”
In his media teleconference to accompany the state’s official release of the district and school-level scores last week, White stressed that 2015’s scores are only year one of a two-year baseline design of the new testing and how it isn’t an “apples-to-apples” comparison to years past.
He attributed that to two main factors continuously: different testing and a different, larger, testing population as special needs students and others were added into the group this year.
The PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) testing was given to students in grades three through eight in March and May 2014. After being scored over the summer and being evaluated for the better part of two months for level of challenging, the state began the process of releasing scores over the past few weeks with the raw data release and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s approval of cut scores.
Now Louisiana is in prime place, according to White, to compare its results to other states and prepare performance scores for schools at the kindergarten through eighth grade levels.
School performance scores and letter grades for elementary and middle schools are expected in December; high school scores and grades will be released this week.
For Acadia, the scores will fall as they will and, at this point, the parish doesn’t have much say in the matter, it can only look at the long-awaited data and work on improving.
Luckily, scores actually fell, for the most part, above state average. And, if the state is aiming for mastery or above in the future, Acadia is already ahead of the state’s pace there, too.
“We’re ahead of the state average, and if you look at the surrounding parishes, we’re doing well and are up in the upper part,” said Bourque.
In grades three through eight, 37 percent of students scored mastery or above in English/language arts and 30 percent of all students in math. This means that about 34 percent of students in the state are ready for “life after high school” as the new normal is slowly pushed over the next 10 years.
In Acadia, those numbers are roughly 40 percent in ELA and 33 percent in math. Numbers in Acadia ranged from 34 percent to 43 percent in ELA and 23 percent to 43 percent in math at the per grade level.
As compared to the surrounding districts, Acadia at 37 percent ranks second highest, behind only Lafayette’s total 38 percent at mastery or above in the two core subjects. Acadia is tied with Vermilion and above Evangeline and Jefferson Davis (33 percent each) and St. Landry (25 percent).
At the school, specific level, Mermentau Elementary (third through seventh graders testing) averaged 54 percent of its third through eighth graders with mastery scores or above. Estherwood Elementary (third through seventh) averaged 55 percent, Midland High’s eighth graders had 54 percent as did Richard Elementary (third through eighth) and Iota Elementary (third through fifth) had 52 percent score mastery or above.
On the other side of the coin, Crowley Middle School (sixth through eighth grade) averaged 19 percent scoring mastery or above, Armstrong Middle (sixth through eighth) averaged 21 percent, Church Point Middle (sixth through eighth) averaged 23 percent, as did Ross Elementary (third through fifth) and Church Point Elementary averaged 25 percent.
All in all, Acadia officials knows the parish has room to improve.
“I think middle school math scores are going to be down across the state,” said Bourque. “But our teachers are handling a whole new math that they themselves were not taught,” said Bourque, speaking to the “Eureka Math” being taught in elementary and middle schools now.
The superintendent did seem confident that those scores, too, would go up as time went on.

Follow Us

Subscriber Links