Iowa Education Department Unveils School Report Card

report cardNorthwest, Iowa — If you’d like to see how your child’s public school rates in several important categories, the Iowa Department of Education now has an easy way for you to do that.  The Department has introduced a new on-line system to evaluate and rate each public school in the state.

Department of Education director, Ryan Wise, talks about the Iowa School Report Card in an introduction on the website.

The report card is based on the performance of each school for a set of measures.

Wise says the report card should be helpful across education.

While the Iowa School Report Card provides a measurement of schools, Wise says it is not the only thing that should be used to judge the schools.

The scores and ratings are based on data reported by school districts for the 2013-14 and 2014-15 school years. There are no consequences or rewards tied to the school ratings.

The ratings are based on each school’s performance over a two-year span on the following educational measures:

·Proficiency: The percentage of students scoring proficient or better on state reading and mathematics assessments.

·College and Career-Ready Growth: The percentage of students who are making the year-to-year growth necessary to be ready for college and career training by the end of high school.

·Annual Expected Growth: The percentage of students making a year of academic growth in a year’s time on state reading and mathematics assessments.

·Closing Achievement Gap: A measure that reflects a statewide goal of narrowing the gap in achievement for students with disabilities, students who are eligible for free and reduced-price meals, and English Language Learners.

·College and Career Readiness: The percentage of students who score at or above a level of performance on reading and mathematics assessments that predicts a higher probability of postsecondary success. (Middle/high schools only.)

·Graduation Rate: The percentage of ninth-grade students who finished high school within five years. (High schools only.)

·Attendance: The average daily attendance of students, which is the total number of days students were enrolled and present divided by the total number of possible attendance days.

·Staff Retention: The percentage of teachers, school administrators and other licensed staff members who remained employed in a school over consecutive school years.

Schools in the KIWA listening area, for the most part, fell into the top half of the rating categories, being listed as “Exceptional”, “High-Performing”, or “Commendable”.  Only four of the area school districts that we checked had schools that were rated “Acceptable”, or “Needs Improvement”, with no area schools receiving a “Priority” rating from the Iowa DOE.

The Iowa School Report Card is available on the Education Department’s website at: www.educateiowa.gov/schoolreportcard.

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