Original Research by School Decision on Frederick A. Douglass High School
Frederick A. Douglass High School operates as a single-school district in New Orleans, serving grades nine through twelve. It is a high school only, so any resident reading about it should know that this account covers exactly one building, not a system of elementary and middle feeders. The school enrolls a few hundred students, spread fairly evenly across the four grade levels, with a slightly smaller senior class. The student body is overwhelmingly Black, with a small Hispanic population and very few white students or students of other racial backgrounds. Data on the share of students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals was not available. Information on students with disabilities and English learners was also missing, so a parent who needs to know about special education or language support programs would need to ask the school directly.
Academically, the picture is thin in the provided data. State testing results were not included, so there is no proficiency index or subject-level scores to describe. The school’s four-year graduation rate was also absent from the data set. The one concrete academic metric available is chronic absenteeism, which places the school in the bottom quartile among Orleans Parish’s districts. More than a third of students are chronically absent, meaning they miss a substantial number of school days each year. That is a soft spot worth a parent’s follow-up: asking what the school is doing to improve attendance and what supports are in place for students who fall behind due to missed instruction.
Per-pupil spending is in the middle range among the parish’s districts and falls slightly below the midpoint. This suggests that the school is not lavishly funded but also not starved relative to its peers in the county. No data on staffing ratios, teacher qualifications, course access, or discipline were available.
The school’s website and directory information did not provide details on programs like Advanced Placement, career and technical education, dual enrollment, or extracurricular offerings. A family interested in whether Douglass offers specific pathways—such as engineering, the arts, or college-prep sequences—would need to seek that information from the school itself, as it was not part of what could be reported here.
The surrounding context is Orleans Parish, and the school is located in New Orleans. The district brief included a search for recent parent-relevant changes but found nothing meeting the threshold for a lasting impact. No recent boundary adjustments, leadership turnover, program launches, or facility upgrades were reported in the search results. The school appears to be in a steady state, for better or worse, based on what was available.
Given the gaps in the data, the clearest takeaway is that Frederick A. Douglass High School is a small, mostly Black high school in New Orleans with elevated chronic absenteeism and no public testing or graduation results to review. A parent considering this school would benefit from a direct visit and conversations with current families and staff to fill in the missing picture of academic performance, student support, and school culture.
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