Iowa Department of Education Releases 2016 Iowa School Report Card


The 2016 Iowa School Report Card, released today, January 12, 2017, by the Iowa Department of Education, shows how each public school building in the state is performing on certain educational measures. Waukee Community School District received a favorable report card, with schools in the district being rated at Commendable or above*.

According to the state department, schools receive a score for eight different educational measures: proficiency, closing achievement gap, college and career-ready growth, annual expected growth, college and career readiness, graduation rate, attendance and staff retention. Then, based on the overall score, schools are assigned a rating: Exceptional, High-performing, Commendable, Acceptable, Needs Improvement and Priority.

The Iowa Department of Education developed this tool in response to a 2013 legislative requirement (House File 215). The goal of the Iowa School Report Card is to present education data in a way that makes it easier for the public to find and understand.

Knowing where you are and where you want to go is a key part of growth and improvement. Waukee Community School District regularly uses education data to tell us how our students are progressing and to adjust instruction for better results.

While we believe this information can add to conversations in our community about how we’re preparing our students for success, these measures are based on limited data. We know from other accountability initiatives, schools are much more than labels. Labels and ratings do not tell the whole story.

For most measures, ratings were based on the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years. You can locate the results for each school building school’s, as well as more information about the Iowa School Report Card, on the following website: www.educateiowa.gov/schoolreportcard  

*Note: Grant Ragan, Timberline and Prairieview were not able to be rated. There are generally three reasons a school would not have enough data to be rated: 1) A school has too few students (fewer than 20) in certain categories to meet minimum group size requirements for reporting student data. These requirements are in place to protect the personally identifiable information of individuals under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. The minimum threshold of 10 is used for staff. 2) A school is new and lacks the multiple years of data needed to compile a rating. 3) The school’s grade configuration is such that it cannot be measured by the Iowa School Report Card