BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) — “Everything is not perfect. But ladies and gentlemen, it’s a beautiful thing when you’re outpacing the state,” Dr. Sito Narcisse, superintendent of East Baton Rouge Parish School System, tells local leaders and school staff as he discusses the 2023 state test results for the parish.
State test results show that the overall district performance score is a letter C and a 69.1 number score, in comparison to 66.5 from last year, showing an increase by 2.6 points.
Although it’s not perfect scores, Narcisse emphasizes it’s big news for the parish.
“We are improving and growing at a fast rate,” Narcisse said. “93% of our schools are in an A, B, C in progress. We have no school with F in progress.”
Besides staff, Narcisse gives credit to ‘the 6 Keys and Strategic Plan’ that has been implemented for a few years that emphasize items, such as ensuring kindergarten readiness, access to quality early care and education, and more.
He also gives credit to a ‘literacy blueprint’ that brings in support of the mayor-president, LSU, Southern University, Baton Rouge Community College, nonprofit and national partners.
“This blueprint that we’ve had for about two years, we’ve actually followed through in terms of what strategies that teachers need to do, how do business partners help with getting kids to read better? How do you get the type of services to help accelerate kids? And that is what I think helped to get to a much better place. Everything can not happen with classroom teachers alone,” Narcisse said.
He gives thanks to the community for support and said the district is set to double down on strategies to make more improvement next year.
“It is now the time for us to double down on these strategies. It is not the time to change strategies, do things differently is to double down on these strategies,” Narcisse said. “The best is yet to come because next year it’s going to be better than that.”
To see state scores, go here.
