Schools receive annual Iowa School Report Card

Some schools high-performing while others labeled as needs improvement

REGIONAL – The Iowa Department of Education released its Iowa School Report Card this month, with area schools rating from high-performing to needs improvement on the new system’s scale.
    Iowa’s schools are rated on certain educational measures, including math and reading proficiency, college and career ready growth and readiness, how many students are improving academically each year, efforts to close achievement gaps, graduation rates, attendance and staff retention.
    Schools are then given a rating of exceptional, high-performing, commendable, acceptable, needs improvement, or priority.
    The school report card meets a legislative requirement and aligns with the Iowa Department of Education’s efforts to provide Iowa residents with meaningful statistics regarding their schools.  
    School ratings represent a combination of scores on the individual measures.
    The data comes from multiple sources including assessment results, and from individual schools’ reporting of data to the Iowa Department of Education.
    Among the area schools, none were categorized in the exceptional category.  Two were listed as high-performing including Harlan Community Middle School, Tri-Center High School and Exira/Elk Horn-Kimballton High School.  
    A number were listed in the commendable category including Harlan Community High School, Harlan Community Intermediate School, Tri-Center Middle School and IKM-Manning Middle School.
    Among those listed as acceptable include Tri-Center Elementary School, AHSTW Secondary School, and IKM-Manning High School.
    Showing as needs improvement were the Exira/Elk Horn-Kimballton Middle School and AHSTW Elementary School.
    A number of schools were named as unable to rate, including Harlan Community Primary School, Exira/Elk Horn-Kimballton Elementary School, and IKM-Manning Elementary School.
    According to the Iowa School Report Card, schools must have at least 70 percent of the performance measures to have a rating through the system.  
    There are generally three reasons a school would not have enough data to be rated including too few students in certain categories to meet minimum group size requirements for reporting, a school is new and lacks multiple years of data, or the school’s grade configuration is such that it can’t be measured (an early childhood center, for example).
    The Iowa School Report Card is only an informational tool, and there are no rewards or consequences tied to the rating.
    To find out how all schools in Iowa are rated, head to the website http://reports.educateiowa.gov/schoolreportcard.
 

 
 

 

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