District presenter outlines how new state accountability system will change Ascension Parish scores

At a meeting of the Ascension Parish Committee of the Whole, a district presenter named Carly briefed members on a major rewrite of Louisiana's K-12 accountability system that the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved in April 2024. Carly said the state and the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) have been sending districts simulated scores so schools can see how the changes will affect reported ratings.

Carly said the new system is built on three central measures: "Grow," which tracks year-to-year student growth; "Achieve," which measures subject proficiency in English, math, science and social studies; and "Thrive," which applies at the high-school level for graduation and college- and career-readiness. "So the new system is built on 3 simple ideas," Carly told the committee, adding that the biggest shift is the emphasis on growth for the district's lowest-performing 25 percent of students.

Under the old model, accountability totals were reported on a 150-point scale; under the new system, totals will be out of 100. Carly showed Ascension's historic scores on the old scale (93.7 in 2023; 95.8 in 2024; 96 in 2025) and the district's simulated equivalents on the new scale (examples cited included simulated results of 55.4 and 52.6), warning that the recalibration will make some schools appear to drop multiple letter grades even where proficiency remained high. "The key difference is that the new system puts enormous emphasis on growth," Carly said.

Carly walked the committee through three school examples to show the range of outcomes: one school that would have fallen from an A to a C on the new scale, another that improved under the growth measures, and a third where strong growth prevented a larger drop. At the district level she said her team's current projection moves Ascension from a simulated mid-50s score toward a projected 56.6 on the new scale, but she cautioned that not every data element from the state had been released and the November official scores could differ.

On how letter grades are set, Carly explained the state has calibrated cutoffs by ranking schools and districts across percentiles (top percentiles make the A range; the bottom 10 percent the F range) and said that these cutoffs have been adjusted during the simulation years. She told the board the state expects to recalibrate cutoffs on a periodic cycle (about every three years), which may shift which scores correspond to A, B, C, etc.

Carly also emphasized that LEAP and other assessments feed into the single accountability score and that the state will publish both the old-scale and new-scale results to allow apples-to-apples comparisons when the LDOE posts official numbers. "We want you to be as best of your hand before the state makes these scores public," she told members, urging the board to prepare clear communications for parents and community members.

Board members thanked Carly for the presentation. The chair said, "I think that's some good information," and several members praised staff and teachers and urged the district to develop talking points and outreach materials so families can understand why apparent drops may reflect a different scoring method rather than a sudden decline in classroom performance.

The meeting concluded with the chair calling for a motion to adjourn; the provided transcript records the call for a motion but does not include a recorded mover, seconder or a vote in the available segments.

What happens next: the district expects the Louisiana Department of Education to publish official new and old accountability scores in November; district staff said they will continue preparing school- and district-level explanations and outreach ahead of that release.