La. Test Show Improvements

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana high school students have shown significant improvement over the past four years on end-of-course tests but still have a long way to go. That's according to figures released Thursday by the state Department of Education.

In some cases, the department says students' scores at the top performance levels — excellent or good — on a four-level scale rose by nearly 20 percentage points since the 2007-08 school year.

State Superintendent of Education John White tells The Advocate (http://bit.ly/NbVh8j ) the tests are tangible proof that the state's education reforms are working.

High school students have begun taking the end-of-course exams in the past few years as the state has phased out the Graduation Exit Exam, which tests students on multiple subject areas learned over the course of several years.

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Information from: The Advocate, http://theadvocate.com