October 7, 2011 – 2:00 pm
Since 2005, New Orleans has improved more than any other school district in Louisiana. District Performance Highlights Educate Now! calculates that the combined DPS for New Orleans should be around 82.4. This means that New Orleans has grown a stunning 25.5 points – 49% – between 2005 and 2011! #1 in Growth Since 2005 District Performance [...]
September 6, 2011 – 12:23 pm
What are End of Course Tests (EOCs)? Louisiana is phasing out the Graduation Exit Exam (GEE) and replacing it with specific End of Course tests, or EOCs. There are six EOC exams. Beginning with the freshman class of 2010-11, students must pass at least three of the tests to graduate: English II or English III [...]
New Orleans students are closing the achievement gap! Some of the most persistent achievement gaps in New Orleans – between black and white, the poor and the well-off, those with and without special needs – are shrinking, and at a pace that is much faster than ever before. This year, for the first time since [...]
Voucher Program Faltering: Accountability and Performance Standards Needed Educate Now! analyzed student test scores from voucher schools and compared them to New Orleans Recovery School District (RSD) schools. We found that for the second year in a row, students participating in the voucher program performed worse than students in the RSD! STUDENT PERFORMANCE Comparing 3rd, [...]
In 2010, Educate Now! convened a Task Force to consider long-term governance alternatives for New Orleans public schools. In a series of meetings over several months, the members of the Task Force worked on how best to restore local control of public education without imperiling the considerable academic progress since 2005. The Task Force determined [...]
December 9, 2010 – 4:56 pm
BESE held its full Board meeting today. The final votes are as follows: 1. Pastorek’s Revised Plan for Return of Schools was approved. 2. BESE approved a new letter grading system for schools, which will go into effect in 2011. The letter grades will replace the current star ratings. The Department of Education estimates over 500 [...]
December 9, 2010 – 10:56 am
After a 13-hour, marathon day of meetings, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) has approved the following items in committee. While these votes are preliminary – each committee recommendation will be considered by the full Board on Thursday – items recommended by committees are almost always approved by the full Board. 1. Pastorek’s [...]
October 7, 2010 – 3:47 pm
New Orleans Schools Show Great Improvement The Louisiana Department of Education has just released the 2010 School Performance Scores (SPS) and District Performance Scores (DPS). So, how did New Orleans schools do in 2010? 1. The percentage of failing schools continues to decline.
October 5, 2010 – 11:03 pm
Fact: RSD charters are serving lots of students with disabilities and working to improve these services. In the 2009-10 school year, the 36 RSD charters enrolled 1,228 students with disabilities, falling just short of enrolling their “fair share” of special needs children by 76 students.
October 5, 2010 – 12:34 am
Fact: For many schools, only the name is the same. Comparing the performance of individual New Orleans public schools with the same name pre- and post-Katrina is not a valid analysis. Why? We shuffled the deck. Schools with the same name may: be in a different location have different grade configurations no longer serve the [...]
