Ascension schools get ‘A’ ranking from state

DONALDSONVILLE — Ascension Parish School Board members applauded school district employees Tuesday night for their work in helping the district receive an A grade from the state Department of Education.

Ascension Parish was one of seven school districts that achieved an A grade on the metric used to determine how districts are performing. The Education Department released the latest school performance scores Monday.

“I’ve been sitting on the board for 10 years, and I’ve never been prouder,” board member John Murphy said.

Ascension Parish Superintendent Patrice Pujol said the A grade was the “culmination of 10 years’ work” and that she “could not be more pleased” with the news. She commended her administrative staff as well as the staff and faculty of each of the parish schools for working to achieve the grade.

“It’s a stellar day in Ascension Parish,” she said. “It’s a great time to be in Ascension Parish.”

Board members applauded the staff in attendance Tuesday night for all of their hard work over the years in raising student performance throughout the district.

Jamie Bourgeois said he was “amazed” at the performance of the district’s “Turnaround Zone” schools, which were schools that had struggled with their school performance scores in the past.

Pat Russo, who has been on the board for 14 years, said she wanted to praise the students who performed well on high-pressure standardized tests.

“To them I say, ‘great job,’ ” she said.

Like Pujol, board member Catherine Davis said raising the school district’s scores to rival the best in the state didn’t happen overnight. Davis, who has been on the board since 1990, said the school district “can’t rest” simply because it got an A grade.

“No, Ms. Cat, we can’t rest yet because we’re not No. 1,” Pujol said.

Comments

1) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 24/10/2012

@Whatnow: My apologies, it was @WhoCares. I would say "forgive me" but you wouldn't read it anyone. For those who do read, my comments were misdirected to @Whatnow when they should have gone to @WhoCares. Now, I think I am caught up. Thanks for the correction @Whatnow.

2) Comment by Whatnow - 24/10/2012

@Noel Hammatt - why are you saying I'm defensive? I only congratulated the schools in Ascension. I don't read your comments anyway.

3) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 24/10/2012

@Whatnow: Why so defensive, and actually, neither you nor the reformers get it. The accountability system? It bears NO relationship to actual quality of the school. If you have heard me speak, or read my work, you know that I always caution people about this. I purposely used the schools in Ascension Parish to make my point. Then pointed out that the same pattern exists across districts. And our magnet program is far from segregated. The school you mention, our "Flagship" high school, if you will? Let's compare it to the top four schools in Ascension. Baton Rouge Magnet High School has 57.8% of its students classified as Minority. Ascension, top four schools have 21% minority. Baton ROuge Magnet High School has 33.7% of its students qualifying for free or reduced meal prices. Top four schools in Ascension? 26%. All of these schools are rated by the state as "A" schools. Four lowest performing schools in Ascension? Average % Minority is 95% and average % qualifying for free or reduced meal prices is 93%. If you don't see a pattern here that makes you question the accountability system, then I can't help you.

4) Comment by Whatnow - 24/10/2012

Congratulations to Ascension Parish Schools!

5) Comment by WhoCares - 24/10/2012

Noel, we get it dude. Being a poor and black district is hard unless of course you have a segregated magnet program. Your same argument should be applied to BRHS. It has the lowest percentage free and reduce qualifiers in the entire parish. It all good though the achievement zone is going to continue to gobble up the poorest blackest schools in the parish with little to no resistance. I don't see the One Community One School District group opposing that. Why? Because it doesn't impact the magnet program. Great job Ascension!

6) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 24/10/2012

Last year, Ascension Parish Elementary schools, when plotted on an XY Chart with the percent of students qualifying for free lunch plotted on the horizontal axis, and the school performance scores plotted on the vertical axis, the resulting line connecting the dots made an almost perfect line that dropped down as the % of low income students increased. And the nearly perfect line was repeated when a similar chart was done for high schools, and middle schools. Correlations were over .95 at every level. What this means, in plain English, is that poverty impacts student achievement (actually that the underlying conditions of poverty impact student achievement) in an incredibly powerful way. Doesn't mean there aren't exceptions, and it certainly doesn't mean that anyone can assume anything about individual students. It does, however, help to explain why the highest performing district in the state (Zachary) has the lowest percent of poverty in their schools compared to the rest of the state (as defined by the percentage of students qualifying for free meals) and St. Helena, which just happens to have the highest percentage of students living in poverty, has the lowest scores in the state. It is NOT a coincidence. When we applaud high scores, and condemn low scores (for schools and districts) without understanding the real reasons for the "rankings" and the scores, we do not help to create better schools, or better communities. This is a fact. The scores do not represent the respective quality of districts. The sooner we come to understand this, the sooner we can have real reform for children, for our schools, and for our state. To understand this better, google: Why schools "fail" or what if failing schools aren't?