OTTUMWA – If you ask the powers that be in the Ottumwa Community School District, the Iowa Department of Education’s top findings weren’t what they wanted to see: five buildings listed as “priority,” three of which were designated for additional help .
But what matters is what’s happening under the hood, so to speak.
Superintendent Mike McGrory, Superintendent Brad McCloskey and Director of Curriculum and Instruction Maria Lantz all believe the district is moving in the right direction, despite last year’s numbers that created this year’s Iowa School Performance Profile.
That doesn’t mean they don’t take these numbers seriously.
“The most heavily weighted categories are proficiency and growth in academic areas, so we’re very focused on our instructional strategies. That’s a big emphasis for us,” McCloskey said. “It’s clear that we care deeply about our children growing year over year based on all of our assessments, and we also continue to focus on instructional strategies that we know work well – and we’re starting to see those results internally.
“But we know we still have work to do.”
What are the Iowa School Performance Profiles?
Created in 2018, the Iowa School Performance Profiles, informally known as a school district’s “report card,” measure every public school district in the state and are composed of several categories ranging from proficiency in math, science and language arts, college readiness , graduation rate, chronic absenteeism, and participation in state-required test assessments.
When calculated by performance level, a scoring system lists school districts in one of six categories: exceptional, high performing, commendable, acceptable, needs improvement and priority. Individual buildings may fall into different categories, and the scoring system is not the same for elementary buildings as it is for secondary schools.
“I don’t think it was a surprise. When we talked to other supervisors, we all understood that the rules had changed and they were building in more accountability for school districts,” McGrory said. “Parents are looking at this from the perspective that their scores have dropped, but it applies to the entire state of Iowa.”
The school district as a whole was below the state average in almost every category, but was above the state average for chronic absenteeism. The Department of Education found the school district needed assistance for English learners, Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders and students with disabilities in three of its buildings: Ottumwa High School, Evans Junior High and Liberty Intermediate School.
None of this was new at the state level, as 351 schools (93%) were found to need targeted support for students with disabilities as they were performing below the level of the bottom 5% of all schools.
In the district’s defense, much of the data is from the 2023-2024 school year — and some is even older, such as the postsecondary readiness aspect.
However, individual building performance was not reduced overnight. Two years ago, high school was considered “acceptable.” But the elementary schools, especially on the north side of Ottumwa, have always been strong.
The template for all other buildings
The success of Horace Mann Elementary and Eisenhower Elementary has been a breakthrough for district officials. Both elementary schools have performed well or commendably in the past two years since the state began keeping data. Neither has needed improvement nor has it been a priority school for the last six years.
It is no coincidence that these two primary schools are neighborhood schools with smaller classes and a lower teacher-student ratio, something the residents on the south side also wanted for their buildings. So the district spent millions of dollars building Fahrney Elementary, which opened this year for grades 3 through 5 as a wing for Douma Elementary, and redesigned the middle school, Evans and Liberty to create that smaller neighborhood feel .
“By making our buildings smaller, they become more personal,” says McGrory. “Some people may wonder how, and that’s because fewer kids will fall through the cracks. They’ll get more support.”
However, Horace Mann was also an early adopter of a new way to measure student achievement, Lantz said, something that is no longer optional for every other school in the district. She said each school was given free rein over its implementation, but Horace Mann was proactive.
“They started voluntarily using things called scales and rubrics to get their staff up and running with this instructional focus, and this really became a focus across the district last school year. It’s now non-negotiable in all our buildings.” she said. “So we’re taking the information we’ve learned from our top-performing primary school, which also has a lot of diversity that is very highly valued.”
McCloskey developed the system, which tracks a student’s growth.
“It tracks their growth against essential standards so that learning is visible to the student and parents,” he said. “They can monitor their learning process, and they started this two years ago.”
Lantz said the way students are measured has evolved in recent years.
“There wasn’t necessarily clarity about what to learn,” she said. “We hoped this teacher liked us, or we hoped we would get extra points by bringing Kleenex boxes. Libras adopt these standards to make it so clear about what they are learning that they track their progress.
“This year, in all our buildings, children will be able to tell you exactly where they fall academically, something they could never say before.”
Tackling absenteeism
The biggest barrier for the school district is the number of absent students, but there have been improvements in that area as well. Last year, the district was 6% above the state average when it came to chronic absenteeism, but Lantz said student enrollment is up 3% compared to previous years.
Prior to this school year, the state changed laws regarding absenteeism, defining a student as “chronically absent” if they are “absent from school for more than 10 percent of the days or hours in the grading period established by a public school.” .
Normally, absenteeism would logically lead to lower assessment scores because fewer students would take the tests, but although the district was slightly below the state average in the number of students taking the state-required Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress, students remained well within the reach that the district sets for itself.
Lantz said the district is pushing for 95% participation in the ISASP, which consists of English language arts, math and science. Last year the total student participation was between 96 and 98%.
“That’s not an area we’re overly concerned about, but more about chronic absenteeism,” McCloskey said. “The whole idea of why we realigned all of our grade levels was to better serve students – especially those special populations – and to personalize learning in smaller learning environments.”
Making the connection
The district makes a conscious effort to inform families about their students’ performance. Time and time again, the district has encouraged parents to look at individual schools in the Iowa School Performance Profile and reach out with questions or concerns.
McGrory said the steps the district has taken, both from an infrastructure and educational perspective, should be compelling enough that the district is moving in the right direction.
“They know all the things we’ve implemented, but it really goes back to, ‘Is your child having a good experience?’” he said. “I think there’s a lot of trust. I think they feel really good about the direction our district is going, but I also don’t think there’s probably been a district in Iowa that has seen more change than ours.
“The two barometers I look at are the graduation rate and the failure rate,” he said. “That’s all going in the right direction.”
Lantz said communicating effectively with families goes beyond the classroom.
“We’re not just people working in schools. Our teachers are at games and we are constantly connected to our community,” she said. “It’s just not an 8-to-5 job, but it’s also at the basketball game, where I’m sitting here next to a mom, and we can talk about things, and that’s such a beautiful thing.
“Our teachers are connected to our community and their children go to school in our community, and that’s why I think the trust is there,” Lantz said. “We see each other all the time, and we can have those conversations. It’s not like we just tell you and walk away.”
What improvement looks like
The effectiveness of the changes implemented this year will be reflected in next year’s performance data. With class realignment leading to smaller class sizes and a district-wide cell phone ban coming into effect before the school year, the numbers may vary.
But what will the ‘improvement’ look like in November next year, when the data from the 2024-2025 period will be used? McGrory said last year’s graduation rate was 96% — which was not included in this year’s performance profile — and may be the best in high school history.
“I always say that if you want people to support what you’re doing, you have to show them the data that shows the growth that you’re making on a regular basis. And I think we have a lot of data points that we can use to show that growth “But we do have areas where we definitely need to grow because we know what they are. We know systematically what we need to do to improve the scores.”
“At the end of the day, student achievement is the reason we exist, right?” said Lantz. “It is intended to ensure that all children perform at a high level. When we look at that growth, are our students performing? Do our subgroups also achieve that?
“The end goal is for every building in our district to perform well, regardless of where it is located.”
McCloskey explained that the district has also introduced a live tutoring program for students as it tries to fill in gaps where learning may have stalled a bit.
“If there is a gap in learning, we can address it now,” he said. “We don’t have to wait for parent-teacher conferences like we used to. If my child is having a hard time, what are we going to do about it (now)? If we do that often enough, you will be the big gainer in large parts of the children.
‘That’s what it really comes down to. It’s about meeting the kids where they are.”
