On June 30, the state education department sent LEAP-test English and math scores to local school districts. It’s the earliest schools have received the high-stakes performance data in nearly a decade.
Often, New Orleans teachers have had to adjust lessons after receiving student scores in the fall. Typically, LEAP scores have been released after classes had already begun, when leaders are paying attention to operational basics, like getting buses on time and delivering lunches to students.
This year, because of the swift test-score delivery from the Louisiana Department of Education, teachers at FirstLine’s July training were able to look at each student individually, planning extra help and curricula in advance, said Sabrina Pence, FirstLine’s CEO.
“This is the first time we’ve been able to ‘pressure-test’ the plans we have in place,” Pence said – instead of using guesswork to create plans, which raises the questions, “Are they the right ones?” she said.
Across the nation, states have improved turnaround times on standardized-test results, said Paige Kowalski of the Data Quality Campaign, a nonprofit policy and advocacy organization dedicated to ensuring data works for everyone navigating their education and workforce journeys. State legislators can mandate timelines for deadlines for exam scores to be released to families, she said. “Tennessee has been a leader in this forever. They’re getting them out in June and July and they always have,” she said. And in Virginia, she said, legislators passed a law requiring exam data be returned to educators and families within 45 days of the exam.
Prompt delivery of test results is especially important in New Orleans, because LEAP scores are the basis for the state’s A- through F-graded School Performance Scores (SPS), which can lead to charter-school closures. Four months from now, the state will issue SPS scores, after additional calculations that factor in course offerings, graduation rates, “college-ready” and student-growth data, that measures how much each student improved from the prior year.
Turning around results quickly must be a state priority, backed by legislative budgets, Kowalski said. “You should be investing in the kinds of systems, routines, and processes that get the data out more quickly,” she said.
Poor SPS performance could result in the closure of 13 charter schools that are up for renewal this year. (See text box.)
Schools slated for renewal
Arthur Ashe Charter School
Audubon Gentilly Charter School
Booker T. Washington High School
Dorothy Height Charter School
Edward Hynes Charter School at Parkview
Homer A. Plessy Community School
KIPP Believe
KIPP Central City
KIPP Morial
Langston Hughes Charter Academy
Livingston Collegiate Academy
Morris Jeff Community School
Young Audiences at Crocker
Understanding a child’s test results
Along with the speedy release of data, the Data Quality Campaigns pushes for clarity of test results that parents and students can easily understand.
“If no one ever told me, ‘Here are your results from your blood test or mammogram,’ and what it means for you — and it only got sent to a state medical board for their research,” Kowalski said. “I wouldn’t take two hours to do it.”
Students also should be able to understand their results, said Kowalski, comparing the understanding of standardized tests with those for advanced placement,which allow students to get into classes that count for college credit. While students who excel on AP tests can see a clear payoff, Kowalski said, the benefit for performing well on state standardized test can feel more obscure.
FirstLine focuses on ensuring parents understand their student’s LEAP scores and whether they are on grade level.
“We’re really able to do it this year,” Pence said of the early release, which allows her staff to give state-assessment scores to parents during the before-school orientation. “We put it in your hands versus mailing it.” As teachers hand it over the scores, they can translate the esoteric “eduspeak” for parents, Pence said.
When grades and test scores don’t align
Many parents think that their children are performing better than they actually are, according to a 2023 study by Learning Heroes, an organization that collects education data. But report-card grades often track a variety of factors, including attendance, that may obscure parents’ understanding of their child’s sheer academic performance.
In Louisiana, it can be confusing. Because students who score poorly on LEAP-test assessments can be held back here, even if they have strong report-card grades.
“Part of grades is about effort,” said Pence, whose staff regularly explains the difference between grades and assessments. Report cards also encompass more than academic achievement, awarding grades for important parts of child development such as participation, effort, and leadership.
Test assessment is more stark: it measures what a student has mastered in certain academic topics. Each spring, to measure student proficiency in English, math, social studies, and science, the state of Louisiana administers LEAP assessment tests to third- through eighth-grade students.
For more than a decade, until 2017, fourth- and eighth-grade students who didn’t pass the English LEAP exam had to repeat the grade. Last year the state reinstated retention for third graders. Third-graders who don’t pass the English LEAP test won’t advance to fourth grade.
Sometimes, grades and test scores don’t align for other reasons. Students may be sick on a test day and other students are more motivated by tests than they are grades. All that data is rich and ripe for evaluation, Kowalski says. She encourages educators to sift through it.
“Is there really a problem there? Were grades inflated?” Kowalski said. “We don’t want our teachers caught off guard. They’re the experts.” That’s why she believes that teachers should get data first, she said, so they can explain results to parents.
School-closure decisions depend on school letter grades
In New Orleans, the stakes go far beyond student retention.
This fall, the NOLA Public Schools district will review 13 charter contracts that are up for renewal within the virtually all-charter district. After the NOLA Public Schools superintendent issues recommendations to the Orleans Parish School Board, the school board votes to decide which of the 13 schools should stay open. Those decisions are largely based on the SPS letter grades received from the state, which are largely based on LEAP test scores.
Every year, schools close. Some closings are anticipated; others come as a complete shock to families and teachers.
Schools that received the LEAP test scores for each of their students three weeks ago and began to scrutinize each aspect of the scores. They go line-by-line to ensure the scores they received came from students who were enrolled for a majority of the year. They also check for other things that may have changed throughout the year, such as new diagnoses for special education or English Learners. Those designations change the weight of the student’s score in the school’s SPS rating.
“Accountability ratings are tricky because you are making a very public statement about the quality of a school,” Kowalski said. “You need to have time in the system for people to look at it, understand it and challenge it if they think something is wrong before you release it to the public.”
Though the SPS scores are four months in the future, FirstLine staff can look at its LEAP scores and make a good guess at the school’s SPS rating, Pence said. “You can do a prediction, but without having your growth data from the state, you can get within five points of accuracy. But you can’t get to ‘this is the SPS,’” she said.
The state expects to release SPS ratings in November, said Thomas Lambert, assessment and accountability director for the state ed department. Kowalski thinks it could be earlier. “If you are administering tests in April there is no reason you can’t have accountability ratings out in October,” Kowalski said.
For schools with low SPS scores, an earlier SPS release carries its own challenges. Fearing closure, teachers might start looking for new jobs mid-year. Students might start trying to move to a higher-rated school.
Because of that, it’s unclear whether earlier SPS releases would make a big difference to parents and students, said Tulane University economist Doug Harris, who has studied the positives and negatives of the New Orleans charter-school-closure process. There’s no good time to close a school, he said.
“You could do it earlier, say in the summer before, ‘This is going to be the last year,’ But you know that’s going to lead to a mass exodus,” Harris said. “If you can do it in the middle of the school year, there’s probably going to be less of an exodus,” he said. “I think the key thing is to have as few (school closings) as possible.”