Avoyelles School District #1 in performance score growth since 2015

While everyone will agree that the Avoyelles Parish School District has room for improvement in its academic performance, a state Department of Education official said the local public school system has plenty of reason to be proud of its efforts.

Dana Talley, the Network Leader for 33 of the state’s public school districts, addressed the Jan. 8 School Board meeting, recalling the district’s Performance Score was 61.5 in 2015 and was 80.3 this past year.

She said Avoyelles was No. 8 in growth in the state over the previous year.

Superintendent Blaine Dauzat said his research found that from 2015 to 2018, Avoyelles was No. 1 in performance score growth.

After the meeting, Talley agreed with Dauzat’s finding for that period.

She said the district improved at a time when stricter standards were causing many districts’ performance scores to decline.

ADJUSTED STANDARDS

Talley said the state adjusted its standards a few years ago to come more in line with other states.

“In general, we have a clear understanding of where we are with those standards,” she told board members. “As we transitioned to the current standards, we did not change what we were teaching, but how we teach it.”

She said that instead of teaching “tricks to get the right answers” in math, the current approach strives to teach students the concepts of math. In the Language Arts area, Talley said schools must not only teach classic literature like Shakespeare, but also instruct students on how to read non-fiction documents they will come into contact with in the work place.

In his comments to the board, Dauzat once again noted that Avoyelles is “dead last in resources” for local public education and is No. 1 in performance growth.

In other action, the School Board adopted a policy to immediately terminate any bus driver who leaves a child on the bus.

However, Dauzat told board members more research must be done on how that policy will apply to teachers, coaches and other staff who drive “activity buses” for school events because termination procedures are different for those employees.

“Technically, anyone who is driving a bus is a ‘bus driver,’” Dauzat said. “We have to check on how this will affect those (activity) drivers.”

Dauzat told board members it was okay to pass the policy “as long as you understand there may be exceptions that have to be made.”