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Fact check/The achievement gap and graduation rates in New Orleans public schools
Fact check: The achievement gap and graduation rates in New Orleans public schools
October 7, 2015
By Charles Aull
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D) made a claim this August regarding educational achievement by public school students in his city. He said,
| “ | before Katrina, the achievement gap between kids in Orleans and kids in the rest of the state was over 25 points. Now that gap has nearly closed. Before Katrina, the graduation rate hovered around 50 percent, now 73 percent are graduating on time.[1] | ” |
Landrieu’s claim, if true, is impressive. However, it turns out that it is difficult to fact check. The mayor's statement accurately reflects data from the Louisiana Department of Education—but not everyone trusts the data, and, with regard to graduation rates, we argue that the data is inconclusive.
Background
The story of public education in New Orleans, both before and after Katrina, is complex. In the years leading up to the storm, New Orleans schools ranked among the lowest in Louisiana. Test scores scraped the bottom; enrollment numbers were abysmal; most students (66 percent in 2005) attended schools that the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) defined as "failing"; and graduation rates lagged behind the state average.
Exacerbating these problems were a weak local economy and frequent personnel changes and corruption in the Orleans Public School Board (OPSB). The latter spawned investigations by state auditors, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI, resulting in the convictions of 27 OPSB employees by the time the storm hit in August 2005.
In 2003, the Louisiana State Legislature passed Act 9 and created the Recovery School District (RSD), a New Orleans-based school district administered by the state. Its mission was to take over schools deemed "academically in crisis" and resuscitate them.
| Act 9 Final Passage — 2003 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chamber | Yeas | Nays | Absent | |
| House | 86 | 16 | 3 | |
| Senate | 32 | 4 | 3 | |
| Sources: Louisiana Legislature, "SB 710 Final Passage - House." Louisiana Legislature, "SB 710 Final Passage - Senate." | ||||
RSD took over its first OPSB school in July 2004 and made it a charter school, a school that is publicly funded and overseen by a state or local entity but operates autonomously. Four more schools were transferred over in May 2005.
Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans on August 29, 2005, just as the school year was getting underway. Along with the carnage that it wrought on the city, the storm decimated the physical infrastructure of New Orleans public schools, disrupted the academic calendar, and temporarily—or permanently, in some cases—scattered students, teachers and administrators throughout Louisiana and surrounding states.
A classroom in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward after the hurricane.
But the hurricane also allowed for a full restructuring of the New Orleans public education system.
In November 2005, Louisiana passed Act 35, granting RSD the authority to take control of not only "academically in crisis" but also "academically unacceptable" OPSB schools. Over 100 were transferred to RSD in 2005 alone, while OPSB retained control over about 20 that met or exceeded state standards.
| Act 35 Final Passage — 2005 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chamber | Yeas | Nays | Absent | |
| House | 89 | 16 | 0 | |
| Senate | 33 | 4 | 1 | |
| Sources: Louisiana Legislature, "HB 121 Final Passage - House." Louisiana Legislature, "HB 121 Final Passage - Senate." | ||||
OPSB eventually converted several of its schools into charters, and by 2014 RSD had transformed all schools under its jurisdiction into charters, making it the first all-charter public school district in the country.
A major result of these changes is that, today, a higher percentage of students attend charter schools in New Orleans than in any other major city in the U.S. In fact, 91 percent of New Orleans students attend charter schools. The closest major city to this number is Detroit, with 55 percent.
Douglas Harris of Education Research Alliance, a Tulane University research organization focused on post-Katrina school reforms in Louisiana, called the transition that New Orleans schools underwent between 2003 and 2015 "the most radical overhaul of any type in any school district in at least a century."
In the wake of these changes, what do we know about what happened to the student achievement gap and graduation rates in New Orleans? Does the data match up with what Mayor Landrieu said?
Education Data
To answer these questions, we looked to data and reports from the Louisiana Department of Education. LDOE is the primary source of information for education data in Louisiana. Their website offers raw data and comprehensive reports that allow us to compare New Orleans and Louisiana schools and to explore a time frame that covers pre- and post-Katrina eras. We presume that Landrieu used state data as well, but we were not able to confirm this with his office.
There is one problem that should be pointed out when it comes to using LDOE data: not everyone trusts it.
Michael Deshotels, a retired Louisiana educator and former executive director of the Louisiana Association of Educators, told us, "I have no confidence in the data they [LDOE] are giving out."
Deshotels and other Louisiana education activists, bloggers, national press outlets and education organizations such as the National Education Policy Center have pointed to a number of underlying issues that they argue call the validity of Louisiana's state data into question. They accuse the state of cherry-picking, misrepresenting and inflating the data, and they accuse RSD schools of selecting or counseling out potential at-risk students and pushing out low-performing students through suspensions and expulsions. In one case, LDOE itself identified errors with its data in the way that some districts were tracking transfer students. It noted in a "pre-review" that RSD’s error rate for tracking exit codes (a number assigned to students who leave their local public education system) in 2012-2013 was 100 percent.
Supporters of the reforms have pushed back against these criticisms. For example, Leslie Jacobs—a former member of OPSB and the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education as well as the founder of the nonprofit Educate Now!—told us that the state has implemented "codes and checks" to prevent data manipulations and pushouts and to encourage accountability.[2] She also added that new enrollment features in New Orleans—such as a centralized student-enrollment process called OneApp—have all but eliminated opportunities for school administrators to select or counsel out potential at-risk students. Her latter point was echoed by education-reform activist Peter Cook in a fact check of a New York Times piece that raised the issue of selecting and counseling out students in New Orleans. Even with these measures in place, Jacobs pointed out, the data shows that the overall performance of RSD schools and their students remains high and continues to improve.
We leave it to our readers to decide for themselves what to think about the LDOE data, and we encourage them to read more about this debate by clicking the links in our sources. Our usage and critiques of the LDOE data in this article are indicative of neither an endorsement nor a rejection. Moreover, we make no arguments here about causation or links between positive or negative changes in New Orleans and the state reforms.
The Achievement Gap
We'll start with the achievement gap part of Landrieu's claim after clarifying a few points on terminology.
The achievement gap refers to a disparity between the overall achievements of one group over another. It is most often used to describe the gaps between the achievements of different racial/ethnic groups, gender groups and socio-economic groups. Landrieu was speaking broadly in his reference to an achievement gap and compared New Orleans students as a whole to Louisiana students as a whole.
Achievement, on the other hand, usually refers to performance on standardized tests. According to a report by LDOE titled "Academic Outcomes," which was released along with a group of data commemorating the 10th anniversary of Katrina, tests in New Orleans previously included the LEAP test for grades four and eight and the iLEAP for grades three and five through seven. During the 2013-2014 school year, these grades transitioned to a "combination of LEAP, iLEAP and PARCC test." High school tests include the state’s Graduate Exit Exam (GEE), End-of-Course (EOC) tests and the ACT.
Landrieu stated that "the achievement gap between kids in Orleans and kids in the rest of the state was over 25 points. Now that gap has nearly closed." Staying within the confines of what Landrieu said, here we are focused on all New Orleans public school students and not individual grades, though we do include the breakdown between OPSB and RSD. Similarly, we are interested in collective test scores and not how students fared on individual tests or subjects.
State data offers an aggregation of how all New Orleans and Louisiana students fared on the LEAP, GEE/EOC and iLEAP tests between 2000 and 2014. This data shows that 25 percent of New Orleans students (OPSB only) scored at basic or above in 2000, while 51 percent of Louisiana students scored at basic or above. This meshes with Landrieu’s "over 25 points."
In 2014, 68 percent of Louisiana students scored at basic or above, compared to 62 percent of New Orleans students. The breakdown for OPSB and RSD was 79 and 56 percent respectively. Full aggregated sets of scores can be seen in the two charts below. Full aggregated sets of scores can be seen in the two charts below.
When we bring all of this together, the available data corresponds with what Landrieu said. An aggregation of how many students scored at basic or above on state tests shows that, collectively, the gap between Louisiana and New Orleans in 2000 was 26 percentage points. The gap in 2014—including both OPSB and RSD schools—was six points.
Graduation Rates
Graduation rates are a more complicated matter.
Graduation rates in Louisiana, as in many other states throughout the country, are based on cohorts. This means that the state determines graduation rates by comparing how many students entered high school in one year and how many graduated four years later. The cohort graduation method grew out of a 2005 National Governors Association task force. Louisiana adopted it in 2006.[3]
Prior to 2006, methods for calculating graduation rates varied. In 2003, for example, the graduation rate was determined by a method in which the number of 12th-grade students in a given year was compared to the number of students who graduated that same year. Before that, the graduation rate indicated how many 18- to 24-year-olds had graduated from high school. Both of these methods are significantly different from each other and from the cohort graduation method, making it difficult to compare the graduation rates in the pre- and post-Katrina eras.
Further complicating the situation is the fact that the chaos caused by the hurricane left a gap in the data for New Orleans schools extending from 2005 to 2009. The state provides no graduation data for those years.
Recall that Landrieu said, "Before Katrina, the graduation rate hovered around 50 percent, now 73 percent are graduating on time." Given the different calculation methods used within this time frame and the gap in the data, how can we know if this is accurate or not?
We found a LDOE report titled "High School Performance," which was released alongside the "Academic Outcomes" report used above. The data in this report shows that the graduation rate in New Orleans was 73 percent in 2014 (rounded up from 72.7) just as Landrieu said. For OPSB that year, the rate was 89.0 percent. The RSD rate was 61.1 percent. Another report, which we used to create the table below, gives the numbers for New Orleans as a whole, OPSB and RSD from 2010 to 2014.
| New Orleans Cohort Graduation Rates: 2010-2014 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Group | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 |
| New Orleans Total | NA | 76.5 | 77.8 | 72.8 | 72.7 |
| OPSB | 90.3 | 93.8 | 89.3 | 89.3 | 89.0 |
| RSD | 49.7 | 58.8 | 67.7 | 59.5 | 61.1 |
| Sources: Louisiana Department of Education, "District and State Graduation Rates (2005-6 to 2013-14)" | |||||
What about the pre-Katrina graduation rate? Was it around 50 percent?
LDOE's "High School Performance" report mentions a 2004 graduation rate of 54 percent. This is the only pre-Katrina year for which the report provides a rate. The 54 percent number, of course, comes from a year that predates Louisiana's official adoption of the cohort graduation rate. Leslie Jacobs of Educate Now! informed us that this figure was compiled retroactively using the cohort formula. We have not yet been able to track down the raw data that the report used for that year or any year before Katrina. We contacted the Louisiana Department of Education, but have not yet heard back. When we do, we will update this article accordingly.[4]
As with the achievement gap, we can say that the mayor's statement reflects LDOE data, but in this instance we argue that the data for pre-Katrina graduation rates is inconclusive. The 2004 graduation rate of 54 percent could easily have been an anomaly, and even though it supports Landrieu's claim that "the graduation rate hovered around 50 percent," one year is not the whole picture. To investigate this issue in full, we would need to calculate cohort graduation rates for 2000 to 2004 using both enrollment and graduation data in New Orleans, as well as information on transfers and deaths, for the years 1996 to 2004, which, so far, we have not been able to find.
Conclusion
In an August 18 speech at the National Press Club, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu stated, "before Katrina, the achievement gap between kids in Orleans and kids in the rest of the state was over 25 points. Now that gap has nearly closed. Before Katrina, the graduation rate hovered around 50 percent, now 73 percent are graduating on time."
On that first point—the achievement gap—we found that Landrieu's statement accurately reflects what the Louisiana Department of Education has reported. Aggregated test scores for all New Orleans and Louisiana students showed a 26-point gap in 2000 and a six-point gap in 2014. On the issue of graduation rates, we again found that the mayor's statement reflects state data, yet this time we said that the data is inconclusive. We have data that shows cohort graduation rates at 73 percent in 2014 and "around 50 percent" for 2004, but the cohort rates for 2000 to 2003 are currently unknown. Underlying both of these issues, however, is the larger question of whether one trusts the state's data in the first place.
Launched in October 2015 and active through October 2018, Fact Check by Ballotpedia examined claims made by elected officials, political appointees, and political candidates at the federal, state, and local levels. We evaluated claims made by politicians of all backgrounds and affiliations, subjecting them to the same objective and neutral examination process. As of 2025, Ballotpedia staff periodically review these articles to revaluate and reaffirm our conclusions. Please email us with questions, comments, or concerns about these articles. To learn more about fact-checking, click here.
Sources
C-SPAN, "Mayor Mitch Landrieu on Tenth Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina," August 18, 2015
The Times-Picayune, "New Orleans high schools: then and now," October 20, 2013
Telephone interview with Michael Deshotels on September 7, 2015
National Education Policy Center, "New Orleans School Dropout Figures Questionable," April 2011
Louisiana Believes, "Graduation Exit Code Pre-Reviews," accessed August 27, 2015
Telephone interview with Leslie Jacobs on September 9, 2015
The New York Times, "The Myth of the New Orleans School Makeover," August 22, 2015
PeterCook.com, "Inaccuracies, Misrepresentations and Glaring Omissions of Fact," August 23, 2015
Education Week, "Achievement Gap," July 7, 2011
Louisiana Believes, "Academic Outcomes," accessed September 24, 2015
Educate Now, "By the Numbers: Student and School Performance," August 22, 2015
Louisiana Believes, "Spring 1999-Spring 2014 Comparison of Average Percent of Students Scoring at Basic and Above Combining Scores on All Subjects of LEAP, GEE/EOC, and iLEAP for All Grades," received via email from Lee Hays at EducateNow! on September 8, 2015
2006-2007 Louisiana State Education Progress Report
2002-2003 Louisiana State Education Progress Report
2001-2002 Louisiana State Education Progress Report
Louisiana Believes, "High School Performance," accessed September 24, 2015
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Notes
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Leslie Jacobs and Lee Hays of the nonprofit Educate Now! assisted us with tracking down LDOE data on New Orleans test scores and graduation rates.
- ↑ The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) lists the formula for the cohort graduation rate, using 2012 as an example, as follows: the "Number of cohort members who earned a regular high school diploma by the end of SY 2011-12" divided by the "Number of first-time 9th-graders in fall 2008 (starting cohort) plus students who transferred in, minus students who transferred out, emigrated, or died during school years 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12." More information can be found on the NCES website.
- ↑ Lee Hays of Educate Now! informed us that it is possible to calculate the "Adjusted Freshman Graduate Rate" (AFGR) for 2003 and 2004. The AFGR formula is described by the NCES, using 2011 as an example, as follows: the "Number of regular high school diplomas awarded in SY 2010-11" divided by the "number or 8th-graders enrolled in the fall 2006 plus the number of 9th-graders enrolled in the fall 2007 plus the number of 10th-graders enrolled in the fall of 2008 divided by 3." NCES notes AFGR is less accurate than the cohort method, and the Federal Department of Education warns against equating or comparing AFRG rates to cohort rates.
