NEW ORLEANS — The Louisiana Department of Education has identified 41 schools across the state that have exceeded pre-pandemic levels for reading and math. Of the 'Comeback Campuses' listed 9 are located within the viewing area including Woodmere School in Jefferson Parish, Galliano Elementary School, Travis Hill School in Orleans, Folsom Junior High in St. Tammany, Village East in Terrebonne, and Greeneville Park Leadership Academy, Jewel M Sumner Middle School, and Midway Middle School in Tangipahoa.
Dr. Cade Brumley, the Superintendent of Education said these schools are exceeding expectations but also working to improve the unsatisfactory rate of their students.
"These are schools that not only have they increased their mastery rates of performance, but they've also lowered their unsatisfactory rates of performance within their students in comparison to 2019," said Brumley. "these are schools that aren't just ensuring that more kids are proficient and compared to 2019. But they're also ensuring more students have mastered content, and fewer students are labeled as unsatisfactory in their scoring on key content."
The state's plan now is to visit all schools listed to congratulate them and pinpoint what they are doing. Depending on their findings, Brumley said, "If we can determine a pattern across these tools, that might be something that we want to expand statewide."
While this is a huge accomplishment that should be celebrated, there is still some work to do. There are still major concerns for the state as a whole surrounding math and reading.
"We've got to go back to the basics of literacy and math. We're spending a lot of time and effort on that. I think if we can ensure that the skills that they need, those foundational skills for literacy like phonics if we can make sure they understand those foundational math skills that too often have been neglected: addition, subtraction, multiplication measurement, and you could go on and on. We have to make sure that our learners are getting this at a very early age in their elementary career so that they're prepared for the rest of their K-12 experience."
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