Most Avoyelles Parish public schools improve LEAP scores

Gone, it seems, are the days when Avoyelles School District officials held their breath, dreading the announcement of state assessment scores.

For the past few years, the district has seen an overall improvement in its 3-8 LEAP scores.

This past school year, APSD was tied for fourth-highest improvement with a 3-point increase -- from 21 to 24 -- in students achieving mastery level on the assessment tests, the state noted in a recently released report on LEAP results.

APSD Superintendent Blaine Dauzat concedes the district’s past scores allowed “room to grow,” but added the results are further evidence of the district’s commitment to improving its students’ education.

Dauzat said the state is now using the number of students achieving “mastery” level on the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) tests to gauge district and school improvement.

‘MASTERY’ NOT ‘BASIC’

“They used to use the percent of students achieving at least the basic level,” he said. “The state decided basic was not good enough, so now they look at the percent achieving mastery level on the test.”

The School District provided a school-by-school comparison of the 10 schools’ increase or decrease in index points -- which are not the percentage of students achieving the mastery level.

Dauzat said he is most pleased with the significant improvement in 7th and 8th graders in the four high schools.

All four high schools saw growth. Avoyelles High improved 5.5 index points while LaSAS and Marksville High both had 10-point increases and Bunkie Magnet jumped up 24 points.

Plaucheville Elementary improved by 6 points, Lafargue and Marksville both improved by 5 points and Bunkie Elementary increased by 4 points.

Riverside “just about broke even” with this past year’s LEAP results showing about a 1/2 point fewer students achieving mastery than the previous year’s results, Dauzat said.

Cottonport Elementary had a significant decline of 13 points in its students achieving mastery on the LEAP.

Dauzat said the difference in improvement rates between the elementary and junior high grades also reflects the fact that the district’s middle grades had “been lagging” for the past few years, so it had more opportunity for growth than the elementary schools. These scores are for English/language arts, social studies and math. The LEAP scores for science will be released in August.

NOT ‘REPORT CARD’

Dauzat said the recently released LEAP results are not the annual “School Report Card,” which gives the district and a school a letter grade on its performance for the school year.

However, the assessment scores are a major component of the Performance Score for the district and individual schools.

“I believe the performance scores for this past school year will be higher in eight of the 10 schools,” Dauzat said. “It may not be enough improvement to make a letter grade difference in all of them, but there will be growth.”