Summary:
In the East Carroll Parish school district, there is only one elementary school, Southside Elementary School, which serves grades PK through 5 in Lake Providence, Louisiana, with a total enrollment of 359 students.
Southside Elementary School is facing severe academic challenges, ranking 687th out of 690 elementary schools in Louisiana for the 2025-2026 school year, placing it in the 0th percentile statewide. This represents a steep decline from previous years, as the school dropped from the 13th percentile in 2023-2024 to the 3rd percentile in 2024-2025, and now to the very bottom. Academic proficiency rates are critically low, with only 21% of students proficient in mathematics and 32% proficient in English Language Arts, compared to state averages of 62% and 70%, respectively. Fourth-grade social studies proficiency is particularly alarming at just 12%, a 46-percentage-point gap from the state average of 58%.
The school faces two major interconnected obstacles: extreme economic disadvantage, with 96.94% of students eligible for free or reduced lunch, and a chronic absenteeism rate of 25.0%, which exceeds both the district average of 17.7% and the state average of 22.5%. The school's performance mirrors the district's low standing, as the East Carroll Parish district ranks 93rd out of 116 districts in Louisiana (20th percentile) with a 1-star rating. While test scores have declined from the previous year, the school's catastrophic drop in state ranking suggests that other schools are improving at a faster pace. Despite the overall low performance, 3rd and 4th-grade ELA scores (34% each) offer a slightly higher baseline, indicating that the challenges are systemic rather than isolated to a single grade level.
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