Bastrop High School

Bastrop High School in Bastrop, LA, serves 794 students in grades 7 through 12 within the Morehouse Parish school district, and it is currently ranked in the bottom 4% of high schools statewide, a position it has held for the past decade.

This school faces significant academic challenges. Only 8% of students are proficient in Mathematics and 25% in English Language Arts, with end-of-course exams showing just 5% proficiency in Geometry and 22% in English II. To put this in perspective, Sterlington High School, located just 12.87 miles away in the Ouachita Parish district, boasts 83% proficiency in Geometry and 90% in English II. A student at Bastrop is roughly 10 to 16 times less likely to be proficient in these core subjects compared to a student at Sterlington. Additionally, chronic absenteeism is a major concern, with 44.2% of Bastrop students missing so much school it is considered chronic—over three times the rate at Sterlington (14.2%).

Despite these low test scores and high absenteeism, Bastrop High School has a graduation rate of 86.7%, which is above the state average. This suggests the school may be graduating students without ensuring they have mastered the academic material, creating a "diploma gap" where a diploma does not necessarily mean a student is ready for college or a career. The school's challenges are systemic, affecting all student groups, and the gap between Bastrop and its high-performing neighbor is widening. This level of underperformance is not an inevitability of the region, but a specific challenge that requires urgent and comprehensive intervention.