J. S. Clark Elementary School

J. S. Clark Elementary School in Shreveport, LA, serves 387 students in grades PK-5 within the Caddo Parish school district, where over 94% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, indicating a very high level of economic disadvantage. The school's overall academic performance is significantly below state and district averages, placing it in the bottom 3rd percentile of all Louisiana elementary schools for the 2025-2026 school year, a persistent trend with zero or one star ratings for most of the past decade. A critical challenge is an extremely high chronic absenteeism rate of 43.0% for the 2024-2025 school year, which is nearly double the state average and the highest among nearby schools, ranging from 38.2% to 46.9% over the last five years.

While many nearby schools also struggle, J. S. Clark's academic trajectory is on a sharp decline, with its state ranking dropping from the 16th percentile in 2019 to the 3rd percentile in 2026, a steeper fall than most neighbors like Pine Grove Elementary and Creswell Elementary, which are also very low-performing. The school shows a relative strength in English Language Arts (ELA), with 38% of students proficient compared to 29% in Math and 25% in Social Studies, though still far below the state average of 70%. This ELA proficiency rate is higher than several nearby schools like Pine Grove (33%), Creswell (34%), and Caddo Heights Math/Science Elementary (34%), suggesting a potential area of instructional focus yielding slightly better results.

A stark contrast exists with nearby "Fundamental" schools like Claiborne Fundamental Elementary, just 2.2 miles away, which ranks in the 97th percentile with 100% math proficiency and a chronic absenteeism rate of only 6.5%, despite serving a population with 62.63% free/reduced lunch. This proximity highlights that high performance is achievable in the same area, but the combination of high poverty and a non-selective model presents a uniquely difficult challenge for J. S. Clark. Despite a favorable student-teacher ratio of 13.3:1, better than the district average, academic outcomes remain low, suggesting primary challenges are related to the profound impacts of poverty and chronic absenteeism rather than teacher quantity. Subgroup data shows a dramatic collapse in the last two years, with every group now ranking in the bottom 7th percentile or worse, indicating a systemic failure that has erased previous pockets of relative success.