Mayfair Laboratory School

Mayfair Laboratory School is a public K-8 school in Baton Rouge, LA, serving 480 students and consistently ranking as the #1 elementary school in Louisiana for the 2025-2026 school year, a remarkable achievement within the East Baton Rouge Parish district, which ranks in the bottom third of the state.

What truly sets Mayfair apart is its near-perfect academic proficiency rates, which are dramatically higher than any nearby school. In the 2023-2024 school year, 99% of Mayfair students were proficient in both Math and English Language Arts, compared to just 48% and 63% district averages. The next best nearby school, Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts, scored 82% in Math and 92% in ELA. Mayfair also boasts an exceptionally low chronic absenteeism rate of 2.5%, a fraction of the district average of 30.5%, and an excellent student-teacher ratio of 9.2:1, far better than the 15.3:1 ratio at the Baton Rouge Center for Visual and Performing Arts or the 33.9:1 ratio at South Baton Rouge Charter Academy.

Mayfair’s success is systemic, serving all student populations exceptionally well, with subgroup rankings in the 99th percentile or higher for Male, African American, and White students, and the 98th percentile for Female and Low Socio-Economic Status students. This "Mayfair Effect" shows that a student’s success is far more dependent on which school they attend than the district itself. While only 24.4% of Mayfair students qualify for free/reduced lunch, the school’s consistent top-tier performance, combined with its low absenteeism and small class sizes, makes it a powerful example of how a single school can defy the performance of its surrounding system.