Briefing Book Notes

• Nearly one out of every three of the approximately 650,000 students in the Louisiana public school system is performing below grade level.
• For the 2008/09 school year, 356 schools had a School Performance Score (SPS) below 80.
• The state's 9th-12th Grade Cohort Graduation Rate is approximately 67.4%, slightly up from the 66.6% graduation rate of the previous year. This means that nearly one-third of all 9th graders failed to graduate on-time.
• According to the National Center on Education Statistics (NCES), the percentage of children ages 5-16 living in poverty in Louisiana is 23.9% -- the highest in the country and almost 1.4 times the percentage of all American children living in poverty (17.4%).
• On the recent NAEP national skills test, Louisiana ranks 50th among states in the number of 4th graders who read at the proficient level.
• In 2010, the state received a School Performance Score (SPS) of 92.5 – the highest in the 10-year history of the state's accountability system.
• From 1999 to 2009, the percentage of students scoring Basic and above on the iLeap test increased from 45% to 65%.
• In 1999, there was an 11.7 percentage point gap in English and a 13.2 percentage point gap in math between economically disadvantaged students and all students; In 2010, the gaps narrowed to 7.8 points and 8 points respectively.
• A recent Education Trust report notes that Louisiana is the only state in the nation in which the achievement gap between black and white students has narrowed significantly in both 4th grade reading and 8th grade math. Still, in 2010, a 23.1 point gap exists between black and white students in English Language Arts. In math, a 26.6 point gap exists between black and white students.