Recently, when the Louisiana Department of Education issued its annual school letter grades, my school received an F. 

I founded the school, Noble Minds, in 2017. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Automatically, people see an F grade and think: bad. What immediately comes to mind are visions of a bad school, with ineffective teachers, and kids running amok. I’m sure that I might believe it too, if I wasn’t in the building every day – and if I hadn’t worked in and around school environments for nearly 30 years.  

Over the years, I have come to understand that one letter grade does not reflect the quality of a school and how it benefits its students. Louisiana has had a grading system dating back to 1997, when the state implemented a state-rating system, based on a 200-point school performance score. (This iteration of the letter grade has been in place for about 14 years in Louisiana.) So measuring school performance is not a new phenomenon in this state. What is new is the current school-measurement cycle. 

Today, schools test students in spring and get their scores in late summer. But the state does not release our school performance scores until a few months later, in November. In some cases, like ours, your school can be closed by June. It’s mind-blowing.  

But I digress. Let’s go back a bit to this most recent letter grade release and Noble Minds’ humiliating F grade, which was published on the front page of every newspaper in the state. 

Noble Minds was designed to be a different space
The day after that letter grade was released, here’s the amazing thing that my teachers, students, and parents did. They showed up.

Ms. Hannah got to school early to test new strategies for teaching fractions to her fourth-grade math class. All over Noble Minds, people were interested in learning. A student arrived that morning excited to present ideas for his project on The Lord of the Flies, the novel that his class had just finished reading. A parent on her way to work rushed into the building to drop off some homework for her daughter who wasn’t feeling well but wanted to submit her assignment on time.

 In short, we had school. A day filled with lectures and discussions, with groans from students about writing assignments and teachers meeting to discuss new approaches and strategies. All of this happened, and happens every day, at this school, the school that earned an F.

We were not surprised, because Noble Minds was designed to be a different space. Our school was founded to meet the needs of students and families that were not being served well: the unicorns who didn’t quite fit in and who needed therapeutic intervention as much as they needed academic intervention. That is the space that Noble Minds fills, as a single-site school within a city of charter organizations. Yet the educational landscape within our city and state are rooted in “school choice.” Or so we are told – and so our parents were told. But after being shuffled from school to school, mostly for behavioral-health reasons, our parents and children tell us that they have found true choice – and a place to belong – in Noble Minds.

Many of our students are special-needs children, who are on the autism spectrum or have generalized anxiety. Our small population works better for them. A lot of our students had been homeschooled prior to coming to us because their parents were concerned about safety and school culture. Others came from schools where they were being bullied for their differences or disabilities. With us, they fit right in. 

Our school’s focus on therapeutic approaches

These students came to Noble Minds because of our focus on therapeutic intervention, which is different than any other school in town. Instead of punishment, we offer counseling. Instead of suspension, we teach self-regulation strategies. Students who were once withdrawn, angry and treated like outcasts are now thriving. 

But when the unflattering F grade was released to the world, it was devoid of that important context. That really stings. I can’t think of another job where a review of your performance is released to the public, splashed on the front page of the newspaper, and you are expected to just show up to work the next day and be normal. I guess that football players or actors do face some bitter critiques –  but at least they get paid millions of dollars for the abuse they take. As you know, educators do not choose their profession to make big money. So why did they show up?

They showed up, because our teachers and parents understand the shortcomings of the current testing system. They know that the results do not reflect our school and what it has accomplished.

After all, Noble Minds didn’t even start testing for accountability until 2021. Our school started in 2017 with three grades – kindergarten, first, and second – and we added a grade each year after that. But could not get high-stakes test results until 2020, because we didn’t have fourth graders to take the LEAP.  Then, in 2020, no one had high-stakes testing. So, in 2021, in the immediate aftermath of COVID, we took high-stakes tests for the first time. It was not ideal. So many students were still doing distance learning that we met some of the students in person for the very first time on testing day. Our families and our city had also been through a traumatic disruption just as the 2021 school year began, when Hurricane Ida, a Category 4 storm, blew through Louisiana, causing high levels of structural damage and leaving New Orleans without power for almost a month.

How did we do? As you can expect: the results were abysmal. Officially, we earned an F. We had just gone through more than one COVID year, dominated by remote learning and emotional stresses. Like every other school, we experienced pandemic learning loss, which has now been documented across America: the average student lost the equivalent of half a year in math and quarter of a year in reading.

In 2022, things were only slightly better. But still an F. Like other local and national schools, we experienced high teacher turnover. Everybody was sick all the time. We were also not getting much better at distance learning and our students were burnt out on interacting only with computers at a time of life when peers are essential to their development. 

We moved to a scripted curriculum and moved above an F

We had to do something. For the 2022-23 school year, we decided to go to a scripted curriculum, to maintain consistency between all classrooms.  We saw The school’s in-person attendance increased exponentially and teacher turnover dropped to pre-pandemic levels. Things were finally coming together. We knew our students were doing great. Our school performance score shot up 17 points, from a 32 to a 50, which earned Noble Minds a D grade.  

Finally, we were out of the F range, and it felt amazing. We were excited to start the school year in the fall of 2023 with that feeling of upward trajectory. 

But that fall, our students in our testing grades changed dramatically. A little under half of our students were brand spanking new to the school. In third grade, exactly 50% of our students were both new and qualified for special-education services. Why does that matter? Doesn’t everybody have those realities in schools? Yes, yes, they do. But it matters because it takes at least the first half of the year to determine student strengths and weaknesses. If they have special needs, it can take even longer. And 30% of our student population is special needs. 

And while other schools experience shifts, they have a much longer runway to correct for them. We have only been testing for four years and we tested a new grade for the very first time in each of those years. 

Remember, in 2017 we started as a K-2 school. In 2021, when we tested third, fourth, and fifth grade, we were doing so for the very first time, with no previous experience. In 2022, we added sixth grade in 2022, seventh in 2023, and – finally – eighth grade in 2023. Our  testing history took place entirely in a post-COVID and post-Ida context. 

But we still showed growth. We reduced the number of students scoring unsatisfactory in every grade in nearly every subject. Though we are an open-enrollment public charter school, Noble Minds students earned Mastery and Advanced scores across subjects. 

Still, in 2024 our School Performance score dropped 2 points to a 48. We were still 15 points up from where we had been. But once again, we were in F territory.

Noble Minds not recommended for renewal of charter contract

In late November, just before Thanksgiving break, we got a call from the Louisiana Department of Education, letting us know that Noble Minds would not be recommended for renewal. Nothing that could be done, we were told. 

We were shocked, we knew there were provisions in the state’s policy to make exceptions, to renew schools with F grades under certain circumstances:  1) If the school shows growth (we did); 2) If the school serves a specialized population (we do); or 3) If they are impacted by special circumstances (hello – paging COVID and Ida). 

Minds were made up, we were told. We made the difficult decision to not pursue renewal of our charter. We wanted to spare our parents the humiliation and degradation of begging for what they have been promised since the beginning of the school-choice reform movement. Instead, we plan to focus on how we can continue to serve our families in the way that brings them the most dignity and respect. 

Our students are not failing, and we are not failing our students. We have grown and learned together under less-than-ideal circumstances, in an educational landscape that has become increasingly hostile to single-site schools who serve unique populations. 

But we promise you: our story will not be reduced to one letter grade.  Stay tuned. 

Vera Triplett is a New Orleans native who was teaching at the college level when Hurricane Katrina hit; to help public schools recover, she returned to K-to-12 education, where she has worked for more than three decades as a teacher, a counselor and a school leader.