After changing the way schools are ranked, multiple ICCSD schools saw their rankings fall in their Iowa School Performance Profiles, released Nov. 12. The changes included de-emphasizing growth and dropping a school by a category for having a targeted group perform below a benchmark or a participation rate under 95 percent.

These rankings are designed to evaluate how well Iowa schools meet Iowa standards and federal requirements for a school ranking system. They help give an accurate measurement to compare Iowa schools and identify schools that need support.

This year, the rankings included updates to the current scoring system for the elementary and middle school criteria and the high school rankings. For the high school system, points were moved from student growth, learning conditions and participation toward proficiency. These changes reduced the scores of many Iowa schools, especially those with higher growth but lower proficiency. Before the changes, the Iowa City Community School District would have had four schools under an acceptable rating, while currently, 15 schools rank below acceptable.

The ICCSD Board of Directors met on Nov. 19 to discuss the profiles’ effects. Lucas Ptacek, ICCSD’s executive director of secondary schools, gave a presentation at the meeting and played a large part in examining what the rating changes may mean for the district.

“It’s a way for the state and a way for communities to judge how the schools are doing and performing for their kids,” Ptacek said. “It’s also a way for buildings and districts to compare themselves to other schools across the state, using some type of similar criteria for public schools.”

Even though the criteria are standardized, Ptacek said they seemed to affect larger, more diverse districts more, noting that 53% of schools with populations over 7,500 were targeted. One key change to the way schools were ranked was if a school needed targeted support, they were dropped a category.

Schools qualify for targeted support if they have a targeted group, made up of 20 or more students, that scores below the state standard for comprehensive support, the bottom 5% of Iowa schools. The targeted groups include students who are eligible for free and reduced-price meals, English language learners, students with disabilities and students who are a racial or ethnic minority group. West has one targeted population that requires support—students with disabilities, defined as those with Individual Education Plans, or IEPs.

Since larger districts are more likely to have populations of these groups large enough to be considered in the data, they are more susceptible to being dropped a category.

“Consider students that are in special education…they are in special education because of the fact that they need additional support to try to catch up to their peers in the areas of reading in their areas of writing, math,” Ptacek said. “So [if we] expect that our students all be proficient, then we wouldn’t necessarily need all the impacts of special education.”

Iowa public schools receive aid at the beginning of the year based on enrollment. “We get [aid] no matter what.  So, we [ask], ‘Does this help or does this provide additional funding for schools that are either targeted or comprehensive? No,’” Ptacek said.

In the past, schools with targeted support would be put on a list of targeted buildings for three years. Now, schools are able to get off that list in one year, something Ptacek noted as a positive change.

“In the past, if you were a targeted subgroup [or] if you were targeted building with one or more subgroups that performed in the lower 5%, it puts you on a list for three years. There’s no way to get off being a targeted building until the end of three years,” Ptacek said. “The really nice thing … is buildings can now get off that targeted list after one year.”

Because of that, each school’s review of its data is now due in February instead of June. Every year all ICCSD schools review their data and work to create a plan for how to improve. These reviews are being created faster so the district can focus more on improving their schools and their targeted status next year.

“So, what we do is we have all of our building principals as well as our district staff. We take a look at pretty much every data set that we have, from enrollment data, staffing data [and] student performance data. The types of things that we’re spending our money on, … our principal and our teacher staffing, we take a look at everything,” Ptacek said. “We take a look at what the data looks like as a whole, and [if] are we allocating our money in a proper way, or should we rethink things compared to what we’ve done in the past?” Ptacek said.

After the data is reviewed, building teams meet to form plans for the future.