Report Card: Charles City School District shows notable improvement

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

All four schools in the Charles City School district improved their grades — from “Needs Improvement” to “Acceptable.”

Charles City’s Iowa School Performance Profile, released this week, shows that student achievement made progress across several key areas.

The profile website results reflect scores on the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress (ISASP), which all 327 public school districts administered last spring. Each of Charles City’s schools achieved growth in its assessment scores compared to the 2018-19 school year.

Each of the district’s four schools has now achieved a rating of Acceptable, and they all moved out of the category of Needs Improvement. The six categories available are Exceptional, High Performing, Commendable, Acceptable, Needs Improvement and Priority.

Charles City Superintendent Mike Fisher said he was excited about the results.

“We’ve still got a long way to go, we’re still growing every day,” Fisher said. “Our staff is working so hard, and our students are working hard, so we’re happy to see some positive outcomes from that.”

Charles City High School realized a significant increase in the percentage of students scoring proficient or above on the English language arts section of the ISASP, moving from 54 percent in 2019 to 68 percent in 2021. There were also notable gains in terms of the percentage of Charles City Middle School students scoring proficient in English language arts.

“While we have some work to do, we are very pleased with the progress we are seeing on this year’s Iowa School Performance Profiles results,” Fisher said. “This report, when combined with our analysis of our state assessment data from last spring, indicates that the improvements we’ve made over the past few years and what we are doing is working. We will remain steadfast in our efforts to ensure each and every one of our students achieves their full potential while attending our schools.”

Charles City Elementary School students are now performing better in math and English language arts, as the percentage of those proficient in both subjects increased from 2019 to 2021.

This is the third year the Iowa Department of Education has released the School Performance Profiles. They provide scores and ratings for each of the state’s public schools, based on how they performed on a set of accountability measures during the 2020-21 school year.

The profiles also outline high school postsecondary readiness indicators based on student participation and scores on college entrance exams, participation in advanced coursework and the percentage of students focused on career and technical education.

Between 2019 (the last time that the ISASP was administered) and 2021, the number of Iowa schools in the Exceptional category decreased by six and the number of schools in the High Performing category decreased by 26. Conversely, the number of schools in the Needs Improvement and Priority categories (the lowest two categories), increased by seven and 21 schools, respectively.

Fisher said that Charles City did not experience the same declines due to the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic as many other schools across the state over the last two years.

He said the school district’s strategic plan features “robust tactics” to continue growth around the district’s focus area of student engagement.

This includes focus on teacher collaboration, alignment to standards and career pathways that leverage learning outside of the classroom, he said.