Louisiana early childhood center scores show some growth in 2022 and more work to do

Louisiana’s childcare centers generally saw their overall scores increase during the 2021-2022 school year, new data from the Louisiana Department of Education shows, though fewer schools were rated as excellent or proficient than in the previous year.

The average overall rating for the state’s early childhood education networks increased by about 0.2 points, rising to around 5.4 from 5.2 in the 2018-2019 school year, the last year where the complete data was available. In both years, the average would have been rated as “highly proficient,” the second highest-rating.

While the data does generally show some improvement, the Louisiana Policy Institute for Children said in an email sent to subscribers that “too many children are still not receiving the instruction needed to fully prepare them for kindergarten.”

"We are excited to report that this data shows that Louisiana’s child care providers continue to improve the quality of care offered to our state’s youngest learners," the organization said.

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The institute also released a breakdown of some of the data, noting that no centers received an overall unsatisfactory rating in 2021-2022, while one had been given the rating in the previous year. But at the same time, the number of centers rated as excellent or highly proficient – the two highest marks – fell sharply, while the number of proficient and approaching proficient centers increased.

In 2020-2021, around 285 centers were rated as excellent, accounting for around 18.5% of the state’s centers, according to LPIC. In 2021-2022, the number of excellent-rated centers fell by 32.3% to 193, which is about 11.8% of all the centers.

The state had around 810 centers rated as highly proficient in 2020-2021, which was about 52.6% of all centers. In 2021-2022, the number dropped by 3.8% to 779, which made up about 47.6% of all centers in the state.

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During the 2020-2021 school year, around 399 centers were considered proficient, about 25.9% of all Louisiana early childhood education centers. The number of centers rated proficient jumped 42.1% in 2021-2022 to 567, accounting for 34.6% of all centers.

In 2020-2021, 45 centers were graded as approaching proficient, which was around 2.9% of all Louisiana centers. In 2021-2022, the number of those approaching proficient rose 120% to 99, making up about 6% of all centers.

But over the past year, the state had far fewer centers get a zero star rating or no rating, falling from 20.6% in 2020-2021 to 12.8% in 2021-2022. The state had slightly more 1-star centers, with the percentage rising from 3.8% to 5%.

Louisiana had slightly more 2-star centers in 2021-2022 than it did the previous year, going from 9% to 10.6%. The share of 3-star-rated centers grew the most, rising from 66.5% to 71.6%.

Louisiana’s early childhood education center network also saw more centers report having less than 25% of their teachers certified in Louisiana, and fewer centers had more than 90% of their teachers certified. 

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In 2020-2021, around 20.2% of centers had 25% or fewer of their teachers certified in Louisiana, while more than half had at least 90% of their teachers certified. In 2021-2022, 24.1% had a quarter or less of their teachers certified, and around 45.7% had at least 90% certified teachers.

This past year, Louisiana’s centers appeared to struggle the most with instructional support and engaged support for learning. Around 9.5% of all the centers were rated unsatisfactory for instructional support, and 2.6% were unsatisfactory in engaged support for learning. No other category had more than two centers that scored unsatisfactory.

That result isn’t too far off from the 2018-2019 year, where 16.7% of centers were unsatisfactory for instructional support and 5.5% were unsatisfactory in engaged support for learning.