Friday, October 15, 2010

NOLA by the Numbers: School Performance Scores

Last week, the Louisiana Department of Education released the 2010 baseline School Performance Scores (SPS), which are used as a measure of absolute school performance and as a means of calculating academic growth. This year’s scores show that, once again, elementary and secondary public schools in New Orleans are among the fastest improving in the state, with the number of schools rated “academically unacceptable” down to 18 from 31 last year.

This briefing, the first in the Cowen Institute’s new NOLA by the Numbers series, presents an analysis of the 2010 SPS scores and how they compare to previous years. Future reports in the NOLA by the Numbers series will look at enrollment and other school-level data as it is released by the state.

Click here to download NOLA by the Numbers: School Performance Scores.

back to top

Meet Our New Assistant Director for Research

We are pleased to introduce Debra Vaughan as the Cowen Institute’s new Assistant Director for Research. Debra comes to us from Chattanooga, Tennessee where she spent the last eight years as the Director of Research and Evaluation at the Public Education Foundation (PEF) in Chattanooga, Tennessee. PEF is a local education fund that has a history of success as a partner with the Hamilton County Department of Education in developing innovative programs that improve student achievement in the district’s elementary, middle and high schools. Data has been an integral driver of those reform efforts, initiated both locally and taken to the state level. Debra has been responsible for all the data collection, analysis, research, and reporting for elementary and secondary school reform initiatives, as well as the college access and success initiatives in Chattanooga/Hamilton County. In addition to many presentations to local and state-level stakeholders, Debra has authored or co-authored several articles and has presented at many national conferences, including the Public Education Network and the American Educational Research Association. Prior to joining the PEF team, Debra was an economic analyst at the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency and an economics professor at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga.

Debra can be contacted at dvaughan@tulane.edu or 504-274-3659.

back to top

Five Years of Post-Katrina Educational Reform Research Conference at UNO

From September 23-25, 2010, the Five Years of Post-Katrina Educational Reform Research Conference convened national scholars with areas of expertise that are critical to studying New Orleans public education such as school choice, governance, charter schools and teacher preparation. Additionally, scholars studying schools in storm-impacted communities in Louisiana brought their empirical understandings of schooling in this new environment.

In addition to sponsoring the landmark conference, the Cowen Institute presented some of its key findings on post-Katrina public education in a presentation titled “New Orleans Education Reform and the Data: An Examination of Recovery School District Performance.” The conference was a great opportunity for both local and national researchers to consider the implications of the education reforms implemented in the five years since Katrina, and to deliberate on where the next five years might take us.

Click here for more information about the conference.

back to top