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Visitor highlights Louisiana NAEP gains, urges local focus on truancy as school-choice debate surfaces
Summary
Kevin Birkin addressed the Acadia Parish School Board to note statewide gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and said the next local priority should be reducing truancy and chronic absenteeism; the meeting included a brief, heated exchange over school choice and vouchers.
Kevin Birkin, a guest speaker, told the Acadia Parish School Board on Jan. 28 that Louisiana’s results on the recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed measurable improvement and urged local leaders to focus next on reducing truancy.
Birkin cited statewide NAEP rankings and growth repeatedly during his remarks. “We were ranked number 32 in the nation,” he said, adding that Louisiana’s fourth-grade reading rank was 16th nationally and that fourth-grade reading scores had improved in the last two NAEP cycles. He described statewide gains in reading and math growth among multiple student groups and said those gains reflect work by educators across parishes and districts.
Birkin said the board should prioritize chronic absenteeism and truancy next. “If the kids aren’t in school, we can’t make it better,” he said, and described plans for a state summit and district-level outreach to bring stakeholders together to address the problem. He said chronic absenteeism in many districts runs about one in four students and that truancy in some parts of the state approaches 50 percent.
Birkin asked the board if it had questions and offered to help bring the truancy discussion to Acadia Parish as part of his outreach across seven districts. Board members thanked him and said they would follow up. The board president concluded by saying he looked forward to meeting with Birkin to discuss next steps on truancy.
During and after Birkin’s remarks the meeting recorded an exchange about school choice and vouchers, with speakers arguing that expanded vouchers and private-school growth could draw students away from public schools and reduce funding available to local districts. The transcript shows disagreement in tone and content; speakers raised hypothetical fiscal impacts and competition from charter and private providers. Those remarks were part of a back-and-forth and were not adopted as board policy or formal direction.
Why it matters: NAEP results are used statewide to judge academic progress; a new push to reduce chronic absenteeism would affect student supports, attendance enforcement and partnerships with courts and community providers if the board pursues the initiatives Birkin outlined. The board did not take any formal action on truancy at this meeting.
