Original Research by School Decision on Pierre A. Capdau S.t.e.a.m. School
Pierre A. Capdau S.T.E.A.M. School operates as a single-school district in New Orleans, a public entity serving pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. The school is part of the InspireNOLA Charter Schools network, a change that took place a number of years ago, according to publicly reported information. The enrollment is substantial for a PK-08 campus, and the student body is predominantly Black, with a smaller share of Hispanic students and very small numbers of white, Asian, and multiracial students. The data on economic disadvantage was not reported, so a parent cannot gauge the share of students from low-income households from this file alone.
Academically, state testing data was not available for this profile. This is a notable gap. It may reflect the constraints of the data collection period or the school’s specific status within the state’s accountability system. Without proficiency results or a multi-year trend, it is not possible to describe academic performance from the evidence here. A parent would want to ask the school directly about its most recent state scores and how students perform on benchmarks across subjects.
The school environment does show one clearly reported metric: chronic absenteeism. The chronic absenteeism rate falls in the bottom quartile among Orleans Parish’s districts, meaning it is higher than most. This is a soft spot. High absenteeism can affect learning continuity for individual students and the classroom environment more broadly. A parent considering this school may want to ask about the school’s attendance initiatives and what supports exist for students who miss significant instructional time.
Per-pupil current spending is in the upper range among the parish’s districts, indicating that the school invests relatively heavily in its operations, staff, or programs. This can reflect higher needs, special programs, or the cost structure of a charter-managed school, but the data does not specify where those dollars go.
The school is named a S.T.E.A.M. school—Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics—which typically signals an integrated approach to those disciplines, though no program details or course access data were provided in this profile. The grade span ends at eighth grade, so there is no high school graduation rate to report; families will need to plan for a high school transition after eighth grade.
The school serves grades that are not all tested, and the missing academic results leave a large unknown. A parent looking at this school would be working with incomplete information from this source and would need to seek out state report cards, school visits, and conversations with current families to fill in the picture of what students actually learn and how prepared they are for ninth grade. The absenteeism figure is the clearest signal here, and it is one worth discussing with school leadership.
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