K-12 Budget: $5.3 billion
Louisiana ranked 49th on the Chance for Success Index, scoring a 71.1, or a C-minus. Weaknesses include a ranking of 49th in family income, 50th in parent education, and 49th in parental employment.
Those lower well-being indicators correlated with poor academic performance. The state ranked 51st, worse than all others, in both 4th grade math and 8th grade math.
The state’s leaders have emphasized improvement in educational outcomes, rather than raw proficiency data. While the Pelican State ranked 47th for the K-12 achievement analysis in overall graduation rates at 78.1 percent, it ranked 11th in the rate of improvement in those rates between 2014 and 2017, with a gain of 3.5 percentage points.
Louisiana’s Every Student Succeeds Act plan places a heavy emphasis on academic growth. The state has developed a tool that allows teachers to set individual growth targets for each student and to make adjustments as they track their progress over time.
For more about Louisiana’s Quality Counts score, click here.
