BASIS Baton Rouge Primary Mid City

BASIS Baton Rouge Primary Mid City is an elementary school in Baton Rouge, LA, serving 423 students in grades K-5 within the East Baton Rouge Parish school district, where a majority of students (67.6%) come from low-income households.

This school stands out for its strong academic recovery and its success with specific student groups. After a dip in performance, BASIS Baton Rouge has shown a clear upward trend, climbing from the 30th percentile statewide to the 50th percentile in recent data. This is a sharp contrast to nearby GEO Prep Mid-City of Greater Baton Rouge, which dropped from the 56th to the 27th percentile over the same period. The school is particularly effective for its African American students, who ranked in the 79th percentile statewide in a recent year—a sign of strong equity in outcomes. However, the school reports an unusually high student-teacher ratio of 231:1, which is an extreme outlier compared to nearby schools like Belfair Montessori School (9.5:1) and Westdale Heights Academic Magnet School (19.6:1). This figure may indicate a data error or a unique instructional model, so it is worth investigating further.

While BASIS Baton Rouge outperforms its district in math (61% vs. 55%) and English (68% vs. 64%), it lags in social studies (50% vs. 46%). A growing concern is chronic absenteeism, which has jumped from 1.9% to 21.1% in recent years—far higher than top-performing peers like Belfair Montessori (6.5%) and Westdale Heights Academic Magnet (1.5%). This trend threatens the school’s progress. Compared to similar high-poverty schools like GEO Prep Mid-City, which has a remarkably low absenteeism rate of 0.1%, BASIS Baton Rouge’s attendance problem is a critical vulnerability. The school’s ability to address this issue will likely determine whether it continues its upward trajectory or begins to stagnate.