‘Cause for celebration:’ Cedar Rapids students see boost in academic achievement

CEDAR RAPIDS — K-11 graders in the Cedar Rapids Community School District are doing better on their recent assessment scores in reading, math and science compared with the 2020-21 academic year.

District officials presented fall and winter assessment data to the Cedar Rapids school board Monday from the Formative Assessment System for Teachers (FAST), taken by K-5 graders, iReady for 6-8 graders, and Measures of Academic Progress Assessment (MAP) for 9-11 graders.

“We know our kids struggled mightily” because of the pandemic, said Adam Zimmermann, executive director of middle schools. “It is a real cause for celebration that we have made significant growth since September. Our teams are working really hard to maintain this trajectory.”

FAST is intended to provide results for use in planning reading and math instruction. The iReady Assessment measures sixth through eighth-graders performance in reading and math compared nationally with their grade level. The MAP Assessment measures growth in math, reading and science.

FAST and iReady are all taken in the fall, winter and spring, and the MAP Assessment is taken in the fall and spring.

Sixty percent of the district’s K-5 graders met reading bench marks for their grade level, according to winter 2021-22 data from FAST. This is an increase of 6 points from winter 2020-21.

Forty percent of middle school students — sixth through eighth-graders — were on grade level or above in reading this past winter; 20 percent were one grade level behind; and 40 percent were more than one grade level behind, according to iReady data. This is similar to data from the winter of 2019-20, before the coronavirus pandemic struck.

More high school students taking the MAP Assessment tested above the 40th percentile in reading, math and science than those who were at or below the 40th percentile:

Schools temporarily closed in March 2020 to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Students returned to school in a variety of ways for the 2020-21 school year — learning virtually from home, in-person at school with social distancing measures in place or a combination of both.

A derecho with hurricane-force wind gusts further disrupted school in August 2020, damaging Cedar Rapids school buildings and displacing families.

Principals, teachers and paraeducators are working “extremely hard to get scores back up so kids can read fluently,” said Eric Christensen, Cedar Rapids schools executive director of Pre-K through 5th-grade.

The district is spending up to $5 million to address learning loss between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years. The money is being directed to expand summer school, increase after-school learning opportunities and other educational services.

Students had the option to take FAST in math during the 2020-21 school year. Ninety-four percent of K-5 students were tested. More than half — 53 percent of K-5 graders — met math bench marks for their grade level in winter 2021-22.

In fall 2020, 11 percent of K-5 students were tested and 41 percent were at benchmark in math.

Twenty-eight percent of ninth — 11 graders were on grade level or above in math on the MAP Assessment in January. Twenty-nine percent were one grade level below and 43 percent were two or more grade levels below in January.

This is similar to data from the winter of 2019-20 before the pandemic, when 28 percent were on grade level or above in math, 31 percent were one grade level below and 42 percent were two or more grade levels below.

Deputy Superintendent Nicole Kooiker said the district is conducting a curriculum review in math for K-12 students. “Our teachers are saying we potentially need something different,” she said.

District officials did not present this assessment data broken down by race and ethnicity, which was asked for by the school board. A deeper look in to the data with the school board will be planned this summer, Kooiker said.

Ambitious achievement goals

During the 2018-2019 school year, district officials set a goal of at least 80 percent of students scoring proficient or advanced on the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress in English Language Arts, math and science by June 2022. At the time, the district had an average of 70 percent in assessment scores for eight years in a row.

The district also has a goal of decreasing the gaps in proficiency rates — race, English Language Learner status and students with an Individualized Educational Plan — by 20 percentage points by June 2022.

Last fall, district officials acknowledged reaching these goals may not be feasible because of a drop in achievement attributed to loss of instructional time because of the pandemic and the derecho, during which both teachers and students had to adapt to remote learning.

“We’re trending in the right direction,” school board President David Tominsky said. “We’re not going to hit that 80 percent, but looking back that was a really aggressive goal.”

Fall on state assessments

The district saw a drop in achievement scores last year on the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress, a test taken by students in grades three through 11 once a year to measure performance in English Language Arts, math and science. Students were not tested in 2020 because of the pandemic.

The most significant declines in Cedar Rapids were in third grade reading and ninth grade math. These are the average results for Cedar Rapids students on the ISASP test:

This is slightly down from the state average of 69 percent in English Language Arts, 66 percent in math and 61 percent in science.

Black students have an achievement gap of almost 40 percentage points in each category compared with their white peers, scoring 32 percent in English Language Arts, 22 percent in math and 20 percent in science. There is even a bigger gap for English Language Learner students compared with their peers. English Language Learners scored 14 percent in English Language Arts, 8 percent in math and 8 percent in science.

Students with Individualized Education Plans scored 15 percent in Language Arts, 15 percent in math and 14 percent in science.

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