Natchitoches Parish School Board Superintendent Grant Eloi presented the board with his report at its Aug. 6 committee meeting.

With the recent release of LEAP data, the state department is focusing on proficiency, which refers to students who are on or above grade level. This is what the graded percentages show and this year it showed that the Natchitoches School district had zero growth, but the district proceeded to gather its own data.

Eloi said that while what the state department said wasn’t untrue, it wasn’t the full picture. Last year the district had 35.5 percent students who were proficient. This number was rounded up to 36. This year the district was 36.4, which was rounded down to 36 percent. There was actually nine-tenths of a point growth in proficiency. 

“There were many districts in the state that went backwards and many districts in the state that stayed the same,” said Eloi. “The state itself was stagnant. So we exceeded the state.”

Some schools had overall performance growth:

Provencal 6.5 points

Fairview .7 points

Marthaville 4.7 points

Weaver and L.P. Vaughn 13.7 points

East 17 points

NSU E-Lab 1.8 points

NSU Middle 8.9 points

NJH 9.8 points

Goldonna 3.5 points

Alluding to big news coming in November, Eloi said that what this will result in is a significant increase in “A” schools and a significant decrease in “D” schools. Perhaps no “D” schools at all.

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