The top reported proficiency rate is 30% in English language arts. The lowest is 17% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Lake Charles Charter Academy Foundation Inc.
Lake Charles Charter Academy Foundation Inc. is a small public charter district in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, serving students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. Because it caps at eighth grade, the district does not run a high school and therefore has no graduation rate to report. The district operates a single school, Lake Charles Charter Academy.
The student body is predominantly composed of Black students, with a much smaller share of Hispanic students, a small number of white students, and a small number of students of two or more races. American Indian, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander students each represent a tiny share of enrollment. The district serves roughly 900 students across its grade span. Information about the share of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, receiving special education services, or classified as English learners was not available in the data reviewed, so a parent may want to ask the school directly about its support resources for those populations.
Academically, the available state assessment results date to the 2014-15 school year, and Louisiana changed its testing cut scores in math and English language arts that year, meaning comparisons to later years may not be straightforward. In that year, reading and English proficiency rates in grades three through eight ranged from roughly a quarter to just over a third of students meeting the state’s proficient or above standard. Math proficiency rates in the same grades were lower, with the highest reported rate in the upper twenties and the lowest in the low teens. A few grade-level results were reported as a range rather than a single figure, a method sometimes used when the number of test takers is small enough that a single point estimate is less reliable. Overall, these results suggest that a substantial portion of students were performing below the state proficiency threshold in both subjects, and math performance lagged notably behind reading. More recent assessment data was not available in the records provided, so it is unclear whether these patterns have changed.
Compared to the other districts in Calcasieu Parish, Lake Charles Charter Academy Foundation Inc. had a chronic absenteeism rate that fell below the midpoint of the small cohort of three districts. That rate stood at just under one in five students, placing it in a middle position. Per-pupil current spending was in the upper half of the middle range among those same districts, indicating that the district allocated a moderately high amount of money per student relative to its parish peers. No other academic or programmatic comparison measures were available, because the cohort was too small to produce a meaningful proficiency index, and the high school graduation metric did not apply.
The district brief search for recent changes of lasting impact to parents turned up little publicly reported information, so there are no recent policy shifts, leadership changes, or facility updates to describe. A family considering this district will want to look into what academic programs and enrichment opportunities are available for middle schoolers, especially since the district ends at eighth grade and families will need to plan for high school placement elsewhere. The single-school structure means the community is contained and likely close-knit. A parent may also want to ask the school directly about current test performance, the support provided for students who are below grade level, and how the school measures progress now, given that the assessment data on hand is from a single year that is now a decade old.
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