BATON ROUGE, La. – Education officials released individual School Performance Scores (SPS) today during a press conference and announced that Louisiana once again improved. However, they caution against placing weight on this year’s results due to significant changes to the state’s Testing and Accountability Program as well as the impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
This year there are a number of changes that make comparing results from 2005 to 2006 difficult; the state replaced The Iowa Tests with new iLEAP tests in grades 3,5,6,7 and 9, changed the way school performance scores are calculated, and had more than 20,000 fewer students taking the LEAP/GEE tests.
Louisiana received an overall Growth SPS of 87.6, up 4.9 points from 82.7 in 2005. The state achieved Recognized Academic Growth and continued to reduce its subgroup performance gaps. Additionally, forty percent of the state’s 1,126 schools – or 450 – met or exceeded their growth targets for 2006, and 58.4 percent showed some growth.
“I applaud the schools that made their growth targets, and even those that showed some growth, because I know they had an extremely challenging year,” said State Superintendent of Education Cecil J. Picard. “Thousands of students were displaced across this state, causing major interruptions in instructional time, but despite that obstacle, a majority of schools still improved. That kind of determination is inspiring,” Picard said.
Louisiana ’s School Accountability System calls for continuous improvement in student achievement. Every year, schools receive numerical scores known as School Performance Scores (SPS). For 2006, significant changes have been made in how scores are calculated.
With the elimination of The Iowa Tests, schools were given a 2005 Transition Baseline SPS that includes only LEAP (4th and 8th grade), GEE (10th and 11th grade) and attendance/dropout data. The 2005 Transition Baseline can be compared to the 2006 Growth SPS, which also includes only LEAP, GEE and attendance/dropout data, to determine an individual school’s growth and whether it is eligible for rewards.
“The iLEAP and The Iowa Tests are on different grading scales, and we cannot judge how well schools grew by comparing the two tests to each other,” said State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education Vice President Leslie Jacobs. “The only way for us to make a comparison was to eliminate The Iowa Tests scores from our 2005 results and compare them to this year’s results, absent iLEAP. That means when judging growth this year, some schools, like a K-6 for example, will only have one grade of test results being compared. While that comparison is valid, it is a less reliable way to judge schools than when you can compare performance of all the grades tested,” Jacobs said.
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