Block High School

Block High School in Jonesville, LA, is a small, rural public school serving 179 students in grades 6 through 12 within the Catahoula Parish school district, where 94.4% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, indicating a highly disadvantaged community.

Block High School has shown promising academic improvement, moving from the 9th percentile statewide in 2024-2025 to the 21st percentile in 2025-2026, with notable gains in English Language Arts proficiency. However, this progress is overshadowed by a severe attendance and dropout crisis. The school’s chronic absenteeism rate of 41.1% in 2024-2025 is significantly higher than nearby Ferriday High School (21.7%), and its dropout rate of 8.9% in 2023-2024 is nearly three times the state average. While Block High School benefits from a very low student-to-teacher ratio of 8.3:1—far better than Jena High School (14.1:1) and Ferriday (9.3:1)—this advantage is not translating into strong academic outcomes, suggesting that poverty and attendance challenges are overwhelming the potential benefits of small class sizes.

Compared to its neighbors, Block High School has the lowest graduation rate (82.8% in 2024-2025) versus Jena (94.4%) and Ferriday (89.9%), and its academic proficiency rates are often half of Jena’s—for example, Algebra I proficiency at Block is 24% versus Jena’s 58%. Interestingly, Ferriday High School, which has a similar poverty level (95.5% free/reduced lunch), manages a much lower chronic absenteeism rate and higher graduation rate, indicating that poverty alone does not determine outcomes. Block High School’s most critical challenge is student engagement and retention; without dramatic interventions to improve attendance and reduce dropouts, its academic improvements will only benefit a shrinking number of students.