White Washing Louisiana Education Statistics
Schneider Exposes White's Muddying the Narrative on ACT Scores
Mercedes Schneider blogged about how the statistics on ACT scores for the RSD schools are constantly being delayed and manipulated by the LDOE. This is typical of constant attempts to cover up embarrassing facts about Louisiana's charters.
How is Louisiana Doing with the Achievement Gap?
Here's another example of data suppression by the LDOE: Federal law requires that each state report each year on relative performance of certain subgroups of students as part of an effort to close the achievement gap between advantaged and at-risk students. In the past when White and his predecessor wanted to emphasize the lack of progress of African American and free/reduced lunch students, the LDOE published test score averages of each such group compared to all students. Now it's like pulling teeth to get these comparisons.
One of the original selling points of the Common Core Standards was a claim by the developers that the new standards would produce a narrowing of the achievement gap. The data from New York state which started Common Core testing a year before Louisiana, demonstrates instead a huge widening of the achievement gap. I wondered how Louisiana was doing in narrowing the achievement gap based on the PARCC-like test Louisiana Educator: White Washing Louisiana Education Statistics:
