By Marlisa Harding

According to data recently released by the Louisiana Department of Education regarding 2020-2021 high-stakes testing, Louisiana students under-performed compared with previous years. Elementary, middle and high school students saw a five percent decrease in the number of students performing at the mastery or higher levels compared with previous scores.

This statewide drop has led some district leaders across the state to request a break in this year’s issuing of school performance scores and district performance scores, a key performance indicator of public schools and school districts.

Karl Bruchhaus, Calcasieu Parish School Board superintendent, said the district did request a waiver for last year’s performance scores, but unlike some districts who battled only COVID-19, the weather oddities of last year in Southwest Louisiana were the biggest motivator for CPSB seeking its waiver.

“We understand that our whole state was negatively impacted by COVID-19, but the effects of weather events in Calcasieu Parish absolutely created hardships in the education environment that set us apart from the rest of the state,” he said.

Between Hurricanes Laura and Delta, the winter ice storm and May’s flooding, he said, “We feel strongly that schools scores for 2020-2021 were definitely impacted by the storms.”

Bruchhaus did praise the performance of staff and students, despite the difficulties, saying that all performed “valiantly” in preparing for the LEAP 2025 exams for elementary and middle school and end-of-course exams for high schools. “But the expectation that we might be able to overcome all of our schools being closed for between 39 and 61 instructional days for the hurricanes, depending on the school, is unrealistic.”

To expect performance to remain the same with hurricane closures combined with ice storm and flooding closures is simply an unfair hand for district, he added. “It is certainly safe to say that our student performance in the state accountability system was not at full strength… Receiving a school or district performance score for 2020-2021 is absolutely not reasonable for Calcasieu Parish.”

While the district has not yet received confirmation of its waiver, Bruchhaus added that high stakes testing data will be used to drive instruction for the 2021-2022 school year.