POLICY BRIEF: Should Louisiana and the Recovery School District receive accolades for being last and nearly last?
INTRODUCTION
In 2003, the Louisiana legislature created the Recovery School District (RSD). With this law, schools that did not meet “minimum academic standards” were to be taken over by the state.[ii]
Then came Hurricane Katrina.
Striking the coast on August 29, 2005, Katrina destroyed not only New Orleans, but also much of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Soon after, in November 2005, the Louisiana legislature passed Act 35.[iii] The new law lowered the academic criteria that made a school eligible for takeover and empowered the state to takeover 100 plus “low performing” schools. The RSD was given the vast majority of New Orleans public schools, leaving just a few high-performing schools to be run by the Orleans Parish School Board.[iv]
In 2010, U.S. Secretary of Education and education reformer Arne Duncan infamously referred to Hurricane Katrina as “the best thing to happen to the education system of New Orleans.”[v]Repeatedly, the RSD has been acclaimed as a positive “game changer for New Orleans”[vi] and has been held up as a model for school reform by various education reformers, politicians, foundations, think tanks, and lobbyists in states across the nation. More recently, the education reformers have parlayed a single research study as demonstration of success in the RSD.[vii]
For the 10th anniversary of Katrina, this brief seeks to provide an overview of Louisiana and RSD data ten years after the implementation of widespread “education reform” in New Orleans.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
The NAEP is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America’s students know and can do in various subject areas.[viii] This analysis will focus on the 8th grade 2013 NAEP Reading and Math— currently the most recent NAEP data available. For a pre- and post- Katrina comparison, 2003 8th grade NAEP is included.
Bottom US States: 2003 NAEP Math 8th[ix]
| 2003 Scale Score | 2003 Rank | 2013 Scale Score | 2013 Rank | ||||||||
| Louisiana | 266 | 47th | Louisiana | 273 | 47th | ||||||
| New Mexico | 263 | 48th | New Mexico | 273 | 48th | ||||||
| Alabama | 262 | 49th | Mississippi | 271 | 49th | ||||||
| Mississippi | 261 | 50th | Alabama | 269 | 50th | ||||||
| District of Columbia | 243 | 51st | District of Columbia | 265 | 51st |
In math, Louisiana increased its scale score 7 points, reflecting longer term rising NAEP scores across the nation. However, relative to all states, it remained ranked at 47th in the nation.
Bottom US States: 2003 NAEP Reading 8th[x]
| 2003 Scale Score | 2003 Rank | 2013 Scale Score | 2013 Rank | |||||
| Louisiana | 253 | 46th | Louisiana | 257 | 47th | |||
| Nevada | 252 | 47th | West Virginia | 257 | 48th | |||
| New Mexico | 252 | 48th | New Mexico | 256 | 49th | |||
| California | 251 | 49th | Mississippi | 253 | 50th | |||
| Hawaii | 251 | 50th | District of Columbia | 248 | 51st | |||
| District of Columbia | 239 | 51st | ||||||
In reading, Louisiana also increased the average NAEP scale score. However, its ranking relative to POLICY BRIEF: Should Louisiana and the Recovery School District receive accolades for being last and nearly last? – The Network For Public Education:
