The Louisiana Department of Education recently released 2009 School Performance Scores (SPS).  The latest report provides us with the opportunity to highlight marked improvement for Louisiana – not only over the last year – but over the last ten years.  And I want to congratulate educators across the state for their tremendous effort and success.

When policy makers set the state’s 10-year accountability goal at 100 in 1999, we were unsure about how quickly the state could achieve that goal. In fact, the state had not administered a student assessment prior to setting the goal. The guiding force was the need for the state to improve at a pace that would allow it to move up from its ranking of last or near the bottom in most education measures.

While our 2009 State Performance Score of 91.0 is short of the 10-year goal of 100, the score represents a significant gain from the score of 69.4 that was achieved the first year, in 1999, as well as a substantial 4.7 gain from the 2008 score of 86.3.

Also notable are the measurable gains Louisiana has made in narrowing the gap between black and white students over the last ten years. The performance gap between black and white students has narrowed by more than 10 percent in English, and 9.8 percent in math. In fact, according to the 2009 Education Watch Report, Louisiana is the only state where the gap between African American and white students has narrowed significantly in both 4th grade reading and 8th grade math.

While it’s important for us to celebrate our state’s progress, these performance scores also bring to our attention the need to continue pushing forward with urgency. The number of schools with a School Performance Score below 60 has been drastically reduced -- from 388 in 1999, to 55 in 2009. But there are still more than 400 schools in Louisiana with a School Performance Score below 80, which means that about 40 percent of their students are performing below grade level.  And more than 900 of our schools earned a score below 100, meaning that about 25 percent of their students are not proficient for their grade level. 

So, still, far too many of our students are being left behind – and Louisiana must remain committed to implementing necessary reforms and focusing available resources on proven strategies if we are going to continue advancing our progress.    

With that in mind, the Department is working with policy makers and educators across the state to aggressively pursue the federal Race to the Top grant, valued at $4.35 billion.

This highly competitive grant application could provide Louisiana’s K-12 education community with an unprecedented level of resources – estimated at $250 to $300 million.

And this opportunity is not just limited to low-performing schools.  Districts that choose to participate in the state’s Race to the Top application will have access to additional financial resources that they can use to turn around not just their lowest-performing schools – but schools that may be performing above the state average.  And this potential aid comes at a crucial time for Louisiana – as we seek to build on our state’s accomplishments.

Louisiana public education is indeed in the midst of great promise, as evidenced by our proven ability to elevate the quality of our public schools and ultimately, improve outcomes for our students.  But we cannot pause.  The potential financial resources available to us through Race to the Top can assist us in our efforts to transform each and every one of our schools to world class education programs.  Louisiana is in the race, and we intend to finish at the top.