Just as students receive report cards, Iowa school districts now receive annual report cards from the Iowa Department of Education.
Tim Christensen reported to the board of education the “grades” on the Greene County Schools’ first report cards, which were released just that day.
Iowa School Report Cards were developed by the Department of Education in response to a federal requirement that every state rank schools.
Every school in Iowa is rated on eight educational measures: proficiency, college and career-ready growth, annual expected growth, closing achievement gap, college and career readiness, graduation rate, attendance, and staff retention. Points are awarded and the schools are ranked as exceptional, high performing, commendable, acceptable, needs improvement or priority needs. According to Christensen, 70 percent of the schools were rated as commendable or acceptable.
Ratings relative to academic performance were based on Iowa Assessment scores.
Greene County Elementary was rated as acceptable with 64 points based on third grade assessment scores. Greene County Middle school was also acceptable with 63.9 points. Greene County High School was commendable with 67.4 points.
Greene County Intermediate School did not receive a report card because there were not enough years of data available for the computations.
The elementary school was rated only on proficiency, closing achievement gap, attendance and staff retention. Ratings ranged from 95.5 percent for attendance to 38.9 for closing achievement gap. The rating for proficiency was 76.1 percent.
At the middle school, ratings ranged from 96.1 for attendance to 34.3 for college and career readiness. Proficiency was rated at 81.5 percent.
The high school’s ratings ranged from 94.8 percent for graduation rate and 94.5 percent for attendance down to 35.9 percent for college and career ready growth. The rating for proficiency was 86.6 percent.
“As a school district, we feel the Iowa School Report Card provides some good information and will start some great conversations across the state,” Christensen posted on the district’s website. “I would like to remind everyone that this rating is based on limited data and is only a snapshot of our schools. As always, we will continue to work hard, improve, and grow as a school district.”
The complete Iowa School Report Cards can be found at http://reports.educateiowa.gov/schoolreportcard.
