NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Louisiana gets high marks in a national education survey for its public school standards, teacher training and the way it measures academic performance, but the state’s overall grade is a “C” because of continued low student achievement and other factors, including poverty and parents’ education.
The annual “Quality Counts” survey was released Thursday by Education Week magazine.
Louisiana gets an “A” in the category of standards, assessments and accountability and a “B” for the teaching profession. But achievement for students in grades kindergarten through 12 rates a “D-minus” and in the category labeled “Chance for Success” the state gets a “D-plus.”
The Chance for Success category measures several factors, including family incomes and parents’ education levels. For instance, only about 50 percent of the state’s children come from families with incomes at least twice the poverty level, compared to a national average of 60 percent; only 32 percent of Louisiana children come from families where at least one parent has a college degree, compared to 43 percent nationally.
As for achievement levels, the state continued to fall behind national averages for fourth- and eighth-grade math and reading, ranking anywhere from 46th to 49th, depending on the subject.
“We continue to rank high in our efforts to gauge and support better outcomes, and we are seeing measurable success in student achievement in some areas, especially when we look at our progress in narrowing the achievement gap and improving teacher quality,” State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek said in a news release. “But admittedly it’s not enough, and we are going to do better through efforts like our literacy and numeracy initiative and increased investments in career and technical education.”
Louisiana continues to get high marks for its accountability program — the setting of standards and the periodic measure of student performance to rank schools and school districts. The program began in the 1990s under then-Gov. Mike Foster.
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