New program brings ‘remarkable progress’ to two Lafayette elementary schools, report shows
Photo caption: Third-grade teacher Morgan Mercado works with students in her English language arts class Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025 at Baranco Elementary in Lafayette, La. Photo by Leslie Westbrook.
By Ashley White
When Morgan Mercado put her third grade students into groups last week, they worked together quietly. There were no complaints or arguing.
It was a shift from the beginning of the year when the Dr. Raphael Baranco Elementary students bickered and complained if they were asked to work together. Mercado said the change is a testament to the Accelerated Campus Excellence, or ACE, program that rolled out at Baranco in August.
One of the five pillars of the program teaches students about social-emotional learning, such as what to do when they’re angry or overstimulated.
“I really see how it’s made a difference,” Mercado said. “In the beginning of the year, they didn’t have those skills.”
The program, which focuses on whole-child development, is the first of its kind in Louisiana and was brought to Baranco and J.W. Faulk elementary schools through a partnership between the Lafayette Parish School System and the Pugh Family Foundation. Next year, Alice Boucher Elementary also will have the ACE program.
Despite a challenging start, both schools have shown “remarkable progress across multiple domains,” including in academic performance and campus culture, according to a first-semester report released last week.
What does the data show?
The ACE program focuses on five pillars: highly effective principals and teachers, instructional excellence, extended school day, mental health and social resilience, and parent and community partnerships.
The model, developed in Texas, also uses financial incentives for staff and costs more to run because of the extended school day. LPSS received a $4.1-million donation from the Pugh Family Foundation to help fund the programs for three years.
Baranco, Faulk, and Boucher have performed far below average on state standardized testing when compared to other elementary schools in the district. In the past two years, the schools have shown little or no growth in the percentage of students who are performing at mastery or above in math or English-language arts.
The average percentage of LPSS elementary students in 2024 who were at mastery or above in ELA was about 50%. At Baranco, 18% of students were at that level; 27% at Faulk were at that level; and 23% at Boucher were at that level. For math, the average percentage of elementary students at mastery or above was about 46%. At Baranco, 10% of students were at that level; 11% at Faulk were at that level; and 17% at Boucher were at that level.
The report released by Steady State Impact Strategies used reading and math testing data from the beginning of the year and middle of the year. It shows that students at both Baranco and Faulk are improving academically.
The report credits that growth to teachers using benchmark data to identify learning gaps and designing personalized plans to address students’ needs. It also said small group instruction, frequent monitoring, and “scaffolded support” were critical to making measurable gains.
When tested in the middle of the year, 47% of Baranco students were at or above reading grade level, a nine-percentage point increase from the beginning of the year, according to the report. And nine times more K-5 students are early, at, or above math grade level.
At Faulk, about 41% of K-3 students are at or above reading grade level, an increase of 14% from the beginning of the year, according to the report. In math, 14 times more K-5 students are early, at, or above math grade level.
Nick Pugh III, co-founder and chair of the Pugh Family Foundation, credited that growth to one of the other pillars of the ACE program: Hiring effective teachers and staff who have autonomy to decide what their students need to succeed.
“That’s the secret sauce,” he said. “Our hope is that this school will be an ‘A’ or ‘B’ school when the data comes in May of 2026.”
Without giving specific data points, the report also claimed that attendance and discipline have improved at both schools through attendance incentives and recognition programs as well as “prompt and consistent enforcement of rules.”
Challenging transition
The promising initial data is one of the reasons Pugh wants to help the district expand the ACE model to other schools. It will launch at Alice Boucher Elementary in the fall.
Despite the positives that can be seen, the initial rollout to Baranco and Faulk did not come without its challenges. There was pushback on the schools’ extended hours and families were upset that teachers and staff they were comfortable with were leaving because of the program’s call for highly effective staff.
The initial announcement of the program also came during the same heated meeting when the school board voted to relocate programs from Paul Breaux Middle and eliminate the district’s Chinese immersion program.
Mercado and her twin sister Taylor Wallace, who teaches math, were working with Woodvale Elementary’s gifted students when the ACE program was announced. The pair attended Woodvale as children and it was their dream to return, especially together.
They hesitated to leave Woodvale. But during an interest meeting, Cayce Otwell, who had been tapped to lead Baranco, said something that resonated with Wallace.
“(Otwell) said she was comfortable at Prairie Elementary (her old school),” Wallace said. “But she knew that she had gifts she needed to share with others.”
At that moment Wallace and Morgan realized they wanted to get out of their comfort zone and share their gifts elsewhere.
They were brought on — as a “package deal” — to teach third grade. A lot of their new students weren’t on grade level in their subjects. Because of the new staff, there was distrust from students and families, Mercado said.
It took time to build relationships to help students move forward. Staff had to show they were “there for the right reasons” and cared about the students, both in the classroom and outside it, she said. And the students had to learn grit.
“There was almost this sense of, ‘I can do the bare minimum and get by,’” Mercado said. “But we’re not just getting by with the bare minimum. We have high expectations. And they have met every single one of those expectations.”
Wallace and Mercado both had moments at the beginning of the year when they wondered if moving to Baranco was best for them.
But as the months went by, they could see positive changes. Students were invested in their teachers returning after winter break and their relationships with each other improved. As ACE is implemented at other schools, Wallace said she knows the overhaul can be overwhelming. But at the end of the day, the program is designed to give students new opportunities and help them grow as much as possible.
“Have faith, trust the process, be open-minded,” she said. “There’s going to be a lot of new things, but change isn’t always bad.”