Louisiana NAEP Performance
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Anonymous
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https://www.nola.com/news/education/louisiana...c1-f3e9f97c01a2.html
Pretty interesting. Louisiana is a very poor state (unofficial motto - at least we're not Mississippi?) that has long had crappy public schools. Not really a place that'd come to mind when you think about good educational practices, achievement, improvement, etc. But, as US scores plummeted to their lowest levels, LA was one of the few states to make GAINS on the NAEP test from 2022 - overall score jumped from 49 to 32 (out of 50), while 4th graders jumped from 42nd place to 16th place (!!!) in reading and 8th graders went from 39 to 29. One of only two states for both 8th graders and 4th graders to gain in both math and reading from 2022 to 2024. I guess curriculum, teaching practices, etc. DO matter. Who woulda thought? |
Anonymous
| Maybe they figured out that students need to be taught how to read. Phonics is essential. |
Anonymous
| What is the ESL vs Native English speaker gap there in Louisiana? |
Anonymous
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Just found it they have 10% Hispanic of which many are most likely ESL, meanwhile VA has 17% Hispanic and 10% Asian. So likely more ESL kids. It is really hard to take a reading test in a different language.
I’m not anti-immigrant, but I am anti using data to prove the wrong points. |
Anonymous
Yes. That explains why those notoriously linguistically diverse states like Vermont, Maine, and South Dakota were among the states with the largest drops in score. |
Anonymous
| Mississippi was early in with a set of massive reforms to their curricula, teacher training, and school system, which have brought their schools from worst in the nation into roughly average (close to top dog when adjusted for demographics). You will note that they have shown some post-covid decline - I suspect that much of that is because they've solved most of their problems and are left with the intractable one of being Mississippi. Next door Alabama and Louisiana, which have been paying attention, have relatively recently instituted their own set of reforms, modeled in part on Mississippi's (LA is more different, I think). They're the only two that showed actual growth - again from an exceedingly low baseline. |
Anonymous
Louisiana is a pretty poor state. While they may not have a large ESL population, this level of growth is really an accomplishment. It can’t be explained away by a lower percent of ESL kids. |
Anonymous
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Louisiana being 32 is great for them. But phonics or whatever isn’t doing much in their student’s preparation for higher Ed.
The top states student scores for the ACT test 2024.. District of Columbia: 26.7 Connecticut: 26.5 California: 26.5 Massachusetts: 26.1 New Hampshire: 25.9 Rhode Island: 25.4 New York: 25.4 Maine: 25.0 Delaware: 25.0 Virginia: 24.8 Louisiana: 18 It’s still the usual states that are on top. Phonics aren’t helping high schoolers if they can’t get into College |
Anonymous
It does take a few years for 4th graders to make it to high school, you know. Maybe add math or data analysis to your "To Do" list. |
Anonymous
FYI - On the ACT, Louisiana tests 100% of high school grads. California tests 3%, Massachusetts 7%, CT 8%, DC 17%. I think it's laughable that you thought DC was one of the top performing "states." https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured...eting-Benchmarks.pdf |
Anonymous
Ding ding! SAT is way more common in those high performing states. ACT is a choice there, mostly made by UMC kids trying to get higher test scores. ACT isn’t universally offered in those high performing states. |
Anonymous
Louisiana uses ACT 100% but with only 1 or 2% of students taking SATs. Massachusetts, Connecticut, DC students use the SAT more than the ACT. Kansas got the highest scores inthe SATs with only 2% of students taking it and that is puffed up. Same thing as DC. Half of the states require all students take the test, half don’t. You’re tight, it’s hard to judge which states are doing better with SAT / ACT when they are having the same percentage of students taking the tests. But there is no reason to believe Southern schools will be better educated than they were a couple of decades ago. Not with Republicans running the schools down there. |
Anonymous
This entire thread is based on a small number of southern states having done extremely hard work to revamp the way their students are taught, generating sea changes in their education systems, and producing wild gains in their ranking on the NAEP. Even wilder, considering their deep poverty and demographics. Meanwhile, many reliably Democrat states have taken a "memorizing multiplication tables is racist" approach. So yes, there may be a reason to believe that at least the southerners' relative position is changing. |
Anonymous
| Louisiana's ELA curriculum is supposed to be fantastic. |
Anonymous
When the red states catch up maybe we can look to the South for ideas but they have a long way to go. But some of the classrooms are required to have Bibles in the classes and pieces read daily. So I’m not sure they have figured out how to educate their citizens yet. |