By Rebecca Burk Ellis / L’Observateur / June 8, 1998

RESERVE – LaPlace Elementary and John L. Ory Elementary lead the pack ofthird-, fifth- and seventh-graders in St. John the Baptist Parish inLouisiana Education Assessment Program scores.

Compared with 1996-97 test scores, third-graders at LaPlace Elementary went up one percentage point in language and nine percentage points in math, while fifth-graders stayed stable with 98 percent passing the exam.

Third-graders’ scores also rose six percentage points in math with 100 percent passing that part of the exam.

John L. Ory seventh-graders improved immensely, shooting up 13 points inlanguage and nine points in math. Every seventh-grader at the schoolpassed both parts of the exam. John L. Ory fifth-graders also improved agreat deal, going up 17 points in math.

Garyville/Mt.Airy Math and Science Magnet School went down 14 points inmath, but fifth-graders went up 10 points in language and 11 points in math compared to last year’s scores.

Eighty-five percent of the third-grade students at the Magnet School passed the math part of the LEAP test, while 89 percent of the fifth- graders passed that part and only 71 percent of the seventh-graders passed the math section of LEAP.

Associate Superintendent Chris Donaldson said the reason the Magnet School, which specializes in math and science, has low scores compared to some of the other schools in the parish is because half of the students are magnet students and the other half are residential.

“The residential half is one of the poorer scoring groups,” he said. “If weonly had the magnet part’s scores they would be very high. It kind ofskews them.”In other schools’ scores, East St. John Elementary third-graders improvedin language, going up 11 points. Of the third-graders who took the languagepart of the test, 96 percent passed.

Glade School third-graders also went up 11 points in language arts, and 97 percent of those students passed that part of the LEAP exam. Butcompared to last year, Glade fifth-graders went down 14 points in math, which means that only 74 percent, compared to last year’s 88 percent, passed that part of the exam. Glade seventh-graders did well, going up sixpoints in language and seven points in math.

At Leon Godchaux Junior High language scores were stable, with 79 percent of the seventh-graders passing that part of the exam. Butseventh-graders went down seven points in math, with only 68 percent of the students passing that part of the test.

Although fifth-graders improved their math scores by six percentage points, Fifth Ward Elementary’s overall language scores have declined quite a bit. Third-graders fell 13 points, while fifth-graders dropped 11percentage points. Only 71 percent of the third-graders and 65 percent ofthe fifth-graders at Fifth Ward passed the language part of the LEAP exam.

West St. John Elementary third-graders drastically went down 19 pointsin math, with only 75 percent passing that part of the exam. Fifth-graderswent down six points in language, but seventh-graders went up six points in language, compared to last year’s LEAP scores at West St. JohnElementary. Seventh-graders also went down seven points in math.”Going up or down one percentage point one year doesn’t matter,” Superintendent Cleveland Farlough said Friday. “The thing I’m concernedabout is that we don’t have a continued trend in dropping. But we havesome good administrators who are focused on the students’ learning.”A new test was given this year to fourth-, sixth- and eighth-graders, taking the place of the California Achievement Test. ITBS ranks theschools on a national level.

ITED, which is the high school version of ITBS, was taken by ninth- through 11th-graders.

Of the elementary schools, Garyville/Mt. Airy Math and Science MagnetSchool, LaPlace Elementary and John L. Ory scored the highest, with theiraverage being in 30s and 40s. Fifth Ward Elementary scored the lowest onthe test with their average being 22.

The high schools – West St. John and East St. John – scored the same withtheir averages being in the 30s.

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