Summary:
The city of Saint Joseph, Louisiana, is served by two public schools within the Tensas Parish school district: Tensas Elementary School (grades PK-5) and Tensas High School (grades 6-12), both of which serve a student population where over 94% qualify for free or reduced lunch, indicating high levels of economic disadvantage.
A clear divide exists between the two schools. Tensas Elementary School is the stronger performer, showing recent academic improvement and achieving proficiency rates in 4th-grade math (69%) and ELA (73%) that actually exceeded the state average. Its chronic absenteeism rate of 26.1%, while still above the state average, is significantly better than the district average. In contrast, Tensas High School faces severe challenges, ranking in the bottom 12% of Louisiana high schools for three consecutive years. Proficiency rates are critically low, with only 5% of students proficient in Geometry and 18% in Social Studies. The high school also struggles with a crisis-level chronic absenteeism rate of 39.9%.
Despite these academic struggles, Tensas High School presents a paradox with a graduation rate of 85.7%—slightly above the state average—and a very low dropout rate of 1.1%. This suggests the school is effective at keeping students enrolled, but the low test scores indicate a potential lack of academic rigor. The high school also has a favorable student-teacher ratio of 8.6:1, yet this resource does not translate into better outcomes, pointing to deeper issues related to student engagement and socioeconomic factors. The standout performance of Tensas Elementary's 4th-grade class offers a glimmer of hope, demonstrating that high achievement is possible within this community and providing a potential model for improvement across the district.
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