EBR magnets get high marks on evaluation by LSU teacher

An LSU professor gives the East Baton Rouge Parish school system’s magnet program high praise in a new external evaluation.
Eugene Kennedy surveyed parents, teachers and students and interviewed administrators, as well as reviewed a variety of in-house surveys and student testing data for the 13 magnet sites operating in spring 2007. In August, the school system opened a 14th magnet site, at Westdale Middle School.
Kennedy found that the magnet program has “generally attracted and provided an enriched educational experience for participating students.”
“While some programs are less successful than others, the majority appears to be effective educational environments,” he concluded.
Kennedy said the most successful magnet programs were the ones at Baton Rouge Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, and Dufrocq, Forest Heights and South Boulevard, Westdale Heights, as well as those at McKinley and Sherwood middle schools, and Baton Rouge Magnet and Scotlandville high schools.
Magnet schools were created to draw students from a mix of racial backgrounds to attend mostly inner-city schools via the lure of specialized programs and, in many cases, higher admission standards.
Kennedy studied East Baton Rouge Parish’s magnet schools during the spring, submitted his report to the school system in October and presented his findings to the School Board on Thursday.
“I want to thank you for pointing out that the magnet program is definitely on the right track and doing the right thing,” board member Darryl Robertson said after hearing Kennedy’s presentation.
Kennedy found the following:
Magnet students, both black and white, significantly outperform non-magnet students on standardized tests, even when “adjustments are made for prior achievement.” But some programs lag behind in some subjects. For instance, Istrouma High magnet 10th-graders improved as much as the evaluators expected compared to their prior achievement, while Istrouma ninth-graders declined compared to their prior achievement.
Parents, teachers and students generally have positive feelings about their programs.
The programs have been implemented largely as planned and schools had the resources they needed to be successful.
Word of mouth from satisfied parents was the best way to recruit new students. Kennedy conducted his external evaluation just before a settlement in the school system’s desegregation case expired in July 2007. Kennedy divides much of his data between black and non-black students, as was common during the desegregation case.
But with the case over, the school system has rewritten the magnet admission rules so that socioeconomics, not race, is the key determining factor.
School Board member Derrick Spell said that in future evaluations the school system should break out results by student poverty not race.
“I think we need to look at in terms of advantaged and disadvantaged students,” Spell said.
Kennedy’s findings were not completely positive:
Some programs struggled to fill their seats with a diverse set of students, probably because “public perceptions, transportation constraints, as well as the perceived academic reputation of the program.” Most of the schools with recruiting problems are concentrated in north Baton Rouge.
Recruiting and keeping good teachers — “especially those with technical skills” — have been difficult. Teachers leave for jobs in the private sector, other schools and other magnet schools in the system.
Administrators listed problems publicizing their accomplishments as their most significant barrier for recruiting. When asked what they’d like to see changed, parents in the magnet program suggested more field trips, improved building conditions, more computer resources and less homework.