Morehouse ParishET sits in northeast Louisiana, a rural community that has watched its population decline for decades. The parish's median household income runs well below the state average. The conventional narrative about places like Morehouse is one of persistent struggle.

The graduation rate data tells a different story.

In 2019, Morehouse Parish hit a low of 64.3%, more than 15 points below the state average of 80.1%. By 2025, the rate had climbed to 88.5%, putting Morehouse 3.5 points above the state average of 85% and marking the second consecutive year above the state line. The 24.2-point gain from trough to current rate is the largest turnaround of any parish in Louisiana over the period.

Five consecutive years of improvement

The turnaround was not a single dramatic jump. After the 2019 low, Morehouse climbed 16.7 points to 81% in 2021 (with 2020 missing due to COVID), then posted four more consecutive years of gains: 81.5% in 2022, 81.6% in 2023, 84.5% in 2024, and 88.5% in 2025.

The 2021 leap is the most striking: a 16.7-point gain in a single data year. Some of that likely reflects a COVID-era reporting effect, as many states saw graduation rates rise in 2021 when testing requirements were relaxed and credit-recovery options expanded. But Morehouse did not give back those gains. The rate held and kept climbing.

The 2025 gain of 4 points, building on an already-elevated base of 84.5%, may be the most impressive of the sequence. Improvement from 64% to 81% can come from capturing the lowest-hanging fruit. Improvement from 84% to 88% requires moving students who are closer to graduating but still falling short.

From below average to above average

For most of the post-COVID period, Morehouse's improving rate still trailed the state. The parish was 2.5 points behind in 2021, 1.2 points behind in 2022, and 1.6 points behind in 2023. Morehouse crossed the state average in 2024, hitting 84.5% against the state's 83.5%, then widened the lead in 2025 to 88.5% versus 85%.

The gap between Morehouse and the state has flipped from minus 15.8 points in 2019 to plus 3.5 points in 2025. The parish's 88.5% rate now sits 3.5 points above the state's high-water mark of 85%.

For context, parishes with similar demographic and economic profiles tend to cluster in the 75-82% range. Morehouse's 88.5% puts it alongside parishes with much higher-resourced school systems.

Five years, no explanation

The turnaround is clear in the numbers. What drove it is not. Louisiana does not publish demographic breakdowns at the parish level with enough consistency to determine which student groups drove the improvement. Morehouse is small, which means the graduating cohort is small, and small-cohort effects can amplify gains just as easily as declines.

Still: five consecutive years of improvement, from well below the state average to well above it, looks more like momentum than noise. Whether the parish can sustain rates approaching 90% depends on whether the underlying changes, whatever they are, prove durable.

Data source

Data from the Louisiana Department of Education. Analysis uses 4-year cohort graduation rates for the 2017-18 through 2024-25 graduating classes. The 2019-20 cohort is omitted because Louisiana did not publish a 2020 graduation rate.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.