Business Report
A regional analysis of area schools released by BRAC today says the Baton Rouge area “as a whole has experienced significant improvement in its educational system over the past four years, and the continued improvement in letter grades in the face of more challenging standards is an impressive result—48% of students in the Baton Rouge area now attend A or B ranked schools.” The area is also home to four of the state’s top 10 school districts, including Zachary, which has been the highest-ranking district in the state for the past nine years. However, BRAC—which is strongly backing a number of bills in the Legislature that would change the East Baton Rouge Parish School System to give more local control to schools and principals—also says the Capital Region is still home to some of the lowest-performing school districts in the state, with more than half of its districts graded a C or below. “Since 2009, the East Baton Rouge Parish School System improved at a rate higher than the state as a whole, achieving a 4.5% rate of growth over the last four years, compared to 3.3% for the state,” the report card says. “Despite this, the EBRPSS still lags behind regional and state performance averages.”