State accountability shift to LEAP 2025 focuses on assessments plus growth
Louisiana has transitioned to a new accountability program – LEAP 2025 – which focuses on student achievement at the end of the school year along with student growth over the course of the previous two school years, according to Kim Hayes, Director of Curriculum for Beauregard Parish schools.
The Louisiana Department of Education has been rolling out accountability scores in segments this summer and fall based on the new accountability measures. The most recent release concerns student progress scores, or how much a student showed growth during the previous two school years.
“Students across the state are engaged in a transition for accountability testing that is intended to move them to achieve Mastery or higher,” said Hayes. “Scores released by the Department of Education this week are concerned with the amount of progress students made toward achieving their individual targeted goal.”
For the 2025 benchmark year, an A-rated school in the state will be one in which students are proficient in literacy and math skills as measured by earning “Mastery” and “Advanced” on state accountability tests. To ensure students are moving toward the “Mastery” target, the DOE assigns each student an individual growth target annually. This growth target measures how much progress a student is making toward the ultimate goal of “Mastery” or higher on the state tests.
Every student not achieving “Mastery” on the LEAP received a growth target for the 2018-2019 year designed to show how much progress the student must make toward “Mastery” to be on target to achieve Master by the 8th grade for elementary students and by the 10th grade for high school students. Students earning “Mastery” or “Advanced” received a continued growth target to achieve or maintain “Advanced.”
The most recent data released by the DOE shows students demonstrating “Top Growth” on the progress measure. “Top Growth” is defined as showing improvement in ELA and math assessments that are on track to “Mastery” level and/or outperforming peers statewide as measured on the value-added model.
Approximately 47 percent of students across Louisiana showed “Top Growth” on ELA assessments, and approximately 44 percent showed “Top Growth” on the math tests. Overall in Beauregard Parish, 44 percent of students earned “Top Growth” for ELA testing while 42 percent earned “Top Growth” for math.
The DOE also released information on the top performing schools and school systems for overall and subgroup categories. Beauregard Parish was recognized as an Outstanding School System in the state for English learners with 54 percent Top Growth in that sub-category.
Three Beauregard Parish schools were recognized as Outstanding Schools in the Southwest Region. Carver Elementary showed a 57 percent Top Growth in ELA and Math scores while East Beauregard Elementary and Pine Wood Elementary both showed a 55 percent Top Growth rate for the ELA and Math tests.
The “Every Student Succeeds Act” (ESSA), the federal education law, was implemented for the 2017-2018 school year. Louisiana has developed a plan to meet ESSA requirements to measure the skills students learn, report information to parents and the public, and support students in making academic progress. The plan includes an eight year transition with new benchmarks set for the 2024-2025 school year.
“We will continue our focus on aligning curriculum to state requirements, implementing relevant practice tests, and engaging our students in best practices that will prepare them to make progress toward or maintain the targeted Mastery or above standards set by the state,” concluded Hayes.
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