Iowa City school added to ‘in need of assistance’ list

Another Iowa City school district elementary school was added to the state's “in need of assistance” list under a federal education law.

Roosevelt Elementary was cited for failing to meet state-established goals in math as part of the No Child Left Behind Act, Superintendent Stephen Murley said Friday.

Hills Elementary made enough progress in reading to not be considered in need of assistance, but it technically remains on the list because Iowa requires schools to meet goals for two consecutive years before being removed.

Kirkwood (reading and math), Lucas (reading), Twain (reading and math) and Wood (reading and math) elementary schools remain labeled schools in need of assistance.

The Iowa City school district also was again classified as a district in need of assistance.

The designations are based on test results from last school year as part of No Child Left Behind, which requires schools to test students and show what the law defines as adequate yearly progress.

The Iowa City school district's shortcomings were mostly from certain subgroups of students –including some minorities, special education students and those from low-income families – not meeting goals.

Murley said the district must address the achievement gap and make sure each student is making progress each year.

“The district as a whole is doing great, … but simultaneously, it's important to recognize that we have work to do in some areas, in some schools,” Murley said.

At Twain, which has been cited for reading for three straight years, the curriculum is being revised to include a small-group reading program. It's doing something similar for math, too.

All the identified schools must allow students to transfer elsewhere in the district, although not to another school in need of assistance. As of Aug. 10, 156 students had indicated they would transfer, which is three fewer than last year.

Penn and Van Allen elementary schools and all of the secondary schools except North Central Junior High are labeled in need of assistance, but they do not receive federal funds for schools with a lot of low-income students, so they are not subject to the sanctions.

The news was not a huge surprise to district officials. When the test scores were released last January, they said the district and some schools likely would continue to be labeled in need of assistance.

Also, the standards keep rising, and the law calls for 100 percent of students to be proficient by 2014, which educators say will be impossible.

Last year, 20.3 percent of Iowa's public schools and 6.6 of the public school districts were identified as in need of assistance, with the state's largest school districts dominating the list, according to the Iowa Department of Education. The year before, 9 percent of public schools and nearly 4 percent of  school districts ]were listed as in need of assistance,

Updated numbers will be available in a few weeks.

In last year's tests, national percentile ranks for the Iowa City school district ranged from a low of 71 in eighth-grade social studies to a high of 97 in ninth-grade science. That means the district's eighth graders, on average, did better than 71 percent of students nationally who took the same test.