BATON ROUGE — Louisiana education leaders met to review how schools will be measured under the state's new accountability system.

Members of Louisiana's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, BESE, met inside the Claiborne Building to assess the changes.

Under the new Grow. Achieve. Thrive. initiative, educational leaders will look at academic growth and grade proficiency for students who are struggling in school. At the high school level, they'll evaluate if graduates are ready for college, a career or military service.

Calvin Nicholas, principal at Helix Mentorship and Maritime Academy, says his school has already been seeing results with kids who have previously fallen behind.

"We've grown higher than we have in the last four years. Our middle school has grown. We have no failures," Nicholas said.

Schools will still receive A-through-F letter grades, but some schools could see their grade change under the new criteria.

Nicholas says that progress didn't happen by accident and his staff has had to watch students more closely.

"We've created a focused staff. We've created a lot of monitoring a lot of tracking," he said.

The new system puts specific emphasis on year-to-year growth in math and English at individual schools, including focusing on progress among the lowest-achieving students.

Nicholas says that means identifying students who need help and finding ways to reach them during the school day.

"Interior interventions, so now you can do it within the class time, cause you can't get everybody after school like you used to," Nicholas said.

The first official school performance scores using Grow. Achieve. Thrive. are expected later this year, based on results from the 2025-26 school year.