LDOE Releases Third Performance Ratings for Every Publicly Funded Early Ed Program in Louisiana
The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) has released the third year of performance ratings for every publicly funded early care and education program in Louisiana, including Type III child care centers, Head Start programs and Pre-Kindergartens. In addition, each school district (network) also received a rating. 

The ratings are in five categories: Excellent, High Proficient, Proficient, Approaching Proficient and Unsatisfactory. To download Performance Profiles for all Early Care and Education sites and networks, click here or to find individual sites go to the Louisiana School and Center Finder . 

To highlight quality services, the Department also announced nearly 400 early childhood education programs that have earned a spot on the state's "Honor Roll" as a result of high performance in the 2018-2019 school year.  

An analysis of the performance data shows the following:  

  • 7% of providers earned an Excellent rating, up from 6% last year. This includes 102 schools, one Head Start/Early Head Start programs and ten private child care centers. Private child care centers generally have the fewest resources of the publicly funded programs making their lack of Excellent scores more likely.

ECE Providers by Rating
Rating
% of Providers
2018-19
% of Providers
2017-18
Change
Excellent
7%
6%
+ 1 pts
Proficient**
76%
71%
+ 5 pts
Approaching Proficient
15%
23%
- 8 pts
Unsatisfactory
0.1%
0.3%
- 0.2 pts
**Due to a change in rating categories from the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 school year, we including providers that had a High Proficient rating within the "Proficient" row in our data analysis. 49% of the Proficient scores in the table are "High Proficient."
  • Top Gains programs, those showing significant growth, were located in 17% of networks. Caddo, Franklin, Jefferson, and Orleans had at least three programs on the Top Gains Honor Roll.

  • Overall, child care programs continue to score lower than Early/Head Start and school programs; however, they continue to show progress at similar rates. The chart below shows improvement over the past four years, including the first year of scores, which was a learning year.
  • Child care programs improved their scores by 0.17 points compared to last year and by 0.34 points compared to the 2016-2017 school year. Early/Head Start programs improved their scores by 0.11 points compared to last year and by 1.2 points compared to the 2016-2017 school year. School programs improved their scores by 0.13 points compared to last year and by 0.22 points compared to the 2016-2017 school year.

  • Yet again, no early childhood networks earned an overall Excellent rating. However, every single network earned a High Proficient or Proficient rating, an improvement from last year. Catahoula & Tensas, Concordia, and Franklin all moved up from Approaching Proficient to Proficient and no networks dropped scores from last year.

  • 100% of networks have at least one Excellent program, and the following networks have three or more: Caddo, Calcasieu, Cameron, East Baton Rouge & City of Baker, Evangeline, Jefferson, Jefferson Davis, Lafayette, Livingston, Orleans, Rapides, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Tammany, Vermilion

The data shows continued improvement, but that too many children are still not receiving the instruction needed to fully prepare them for kindergarten.  
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