Livingston Parish’s School Performance Score

Recalculated Higher; Correction Boosts District’s Standing

            LIVINGSTON, La. – Livingston Parish Public Schools will be awarded a higher District Performance Score (DPS) than originally reported by the State Department of Education after concerns were addressed with the state’s calculation formula.

            Originally, back in October, Livingston’s score for the 2008-2009 school year was said to be 101.3 – denoting a two-tenths of point drop from the previous year.  However, the district’s score will be higher than 104.4 after the corrections are input into the state’s calculation, reflecting more than 3 points of growth overall and restoring Livingston Parish back among the state’s top 10 performing districts.

            “Livingston Parish has always been fortunate to be a Top 10 School System.  We appreciate all the assistance provided to us by the State Department of Education in the recalculation of our score,” Superintendent Bill Spear said. 

“Our teachers and administrators work hard to provide each child with a quality education.  They take pride in being one of the best.  This acknowledged correction by the state means a lot to them and it says a lot about the effort they put forth each day,” Spear said.

            Spear said school officials identified two errors in the state’s scoring process that incorrectly and adversely affected Livingston Parish’s overall score.  One of the errors has been corrected, and has been input into the system, currently boosting Livingston Parish’ score to 104.4. 

“The other recalculation will take longer, but we are assured by the state department that once it is corrected, our score will go even higher,” Spear said.

Each year, the state releases scores for all public school districts in Louisiana.  These scores are based upon a matrix of calculations and multipliers that weigh student scores on accountability tests, attendance and drop-outs. 

            Spear said he and his administrators were perplexed by the state’s original report, which showed the parish having a significant increase in dropouts.  Just the year before, Livingston Parish was reported as having one of the best graduation rates in the state.

            As it turned out, one of the parish’s high schools that houses grades 10-12 on its campus was being calculated as having a 9-12 grade configuration.

“Of course there was no ninth grade class at that school, which caused the state’s formula to calculate an entire ninth grade class as dropouts,” Spear said.

He said state officials noticed the miscalculation when they were configuring the score for that individual school.  However, they did not make the correction when they calculated the district’s overall score.  

“It has now been corrected,” Spear said.

 Spear said additionally there were issues in the manner in which the state department tracks Adult Education students and how that tracking is calculated into the dropout rate.

“The State Department of Education is in the process of correcting that data.  We know this will make our District Performance Score go up even higher.  We just don’t know how high at this time,” Spear said.

Spear noted that nearly every school in Livingston Parish – 35 out of 39 – increased its School Performance Score, according to the state’s latest accountability report.  Another school maintained the same score from the year before. 

Twenty-four of the Livingston Parish’s schools rank as three-star schools, meaning they have earned 100 points or higher in the state’s scoring formula.   The district’s other 15 schools have two-star ratings.