Letter grades improve in 20 of 26 Lafourche schools

Officials from Lafourche Parish Public Schools recently voiced concerns about bonus points, which are awarded to individual schools and in turn affect a school’s letter grade, but state education superintendent John White took the blame for a miscommunication regarding the bonus-point policy.

Twenty of the parish’s 26 elementary and middle schools will receive improved letter grades when numbers are released next month, according to White.

“I spoke to Superintendent Jo Ann Matthews about this last week,” White said. “It was an error in communication, and I take responsibility.”

At last Wednesday’s school board meeting, Karen Gisclair, Lafourche Parish Public Schools curriculum assistant supervisor in charge of accountability, and three parish principals spoke before the board after state rosters for some schools showed a lower number of proficient students than principals expected to see. School officials used a formula given to them last year by the state to calculate the 2012-2013 bonus point numbers, which they understood to be based off the number of students who achieved a proficient rating. Those numbers were higher than those on the state rosters, which schools must verify each fall.

“This is part of the new accountability system,” Gisclair said. “This is the schools’ first time to be rated this way, and the first time we are using this calculator. With the new formula that the state gave us, we should have had more students earning the schools bonus points.”

Gisclair and Kenny Delcambre, principal at Sixth Ward Middle School, both expressed concerns that the bonus point calculations could keep several schools from moving up letter grades.

Elementary and middle schools students are rated proficient and non-proficient based on the Leap and I-Leap test scores, and students performances on the test are rated advanced, mastery, basic, approaching basic and unsatisfactory.

Diane Smith, principal at South Thibodaux Elementary and president of the Lafourche Association of Principals, voiced apprehensions over targets students are expected to reach.

“I am concerned about these targets and how the state is getting them,” Smith said. “Students have the same (test) scores but different targets.”

In a telephone interview following the meeting, White revealed almost all of the parish’s elementary and middle schools earned a letter grade increase. In addition to improved letter grades for most schools, none of the remaining schools went down a letter grade. Nineteen of the schools also received bonus points.

“For years, we gave points for approaching basic (on the I-Leap and Leap tests),” White said. “This year, we stopped giving points for that. It’s not honest to give bonus points to kids who scored below their grade level.

“Most of the schools would have gone up without the bonus points, but not all,” White said. “It would have been about 50-50.”

White has since spoken to Matthews and acknowledged that he expected bumps in the road in the first year of doing something that is new at public schools across the nation.

“I had similar phone calls from other parishes expressing concerns,” White said. “It is important to note that the policy has never been changed or reworded. Those concerns are misplaced. I need to do a better job communicating with Lafourche Parish administration. I did not communicate the precise policy to them, and I take responsibility for the miscommunication.

“The policy (of awarding bonus points) did what is supposed to do. Lafourche Parish did a great job (last year). Twenty schools went up and zero went down. When you have zero schools move down a letter grade, the policy is working.”