Performance is improving a bit for Louisiana students attending private Louisiana schools at taxpayer expense, but only about 44% of those students have reached a “basic” achievement level and 23 of the 125 participating private schools performed too poorly to continue enrolling new voucher students next year.
As The Associated Press reports, the state Department of Education released the latest report on the voucher program—formally known as the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program—earlier today. The 44% scoring “basic” or better on standardized tests for the 2013-14 academic year was an improvement of more than 2 percentage points over the previous year. But it was well behind the statewide figure of 69%.
The voucher program allows students from low- to moderate-income families to apply for government-paid tuition at approved private schools if they would otherwise be assigned to a poorly performing public school—one earning a C, D or an F in the state performance rankings. More than 6,700 students were enrolled in the voucher program last year.
The department stresses that voucher students take the same tests for evaluation purposes as those in public schools. And schools with significant numbers of voucher students are graded, based on the performance of the publicly funded students, in ways similar to the way all public schools are graded. Of the 23 schools that will not be able to enroll new voucher students, three are slated to close, state officials say. Read the full story.
