BeatsExpectations
Demographically-adjusted score · methodologyTier
OUTPERFORMING
Top 10% of IA schools after controlling for student poverty
Actual proficiency
93.7%
composite math + reading, all grades
Predicted
70.8%
based on IA schools with similar FRL share
Beats by
+22.9pp
above demographic expectation
What this means: About 94% of students here test proficient in math and reading, well above the roughly 71% typical for Iowa schools with a similar share of low-income students. BeatsExpectations ranks schools against others at the same poverty level, not by raw scores, so a school can post high scores and still fall short of its prediction, or post lower scores and still beat it. This school clears its prediction by about 23 points, placing it in Iowa's top 10%.
BeatsExpectations runs a per-state regression of proficiency on free/reduced-lunch share, then scores each school by residual.
How this is calculated →What is ISASP?
ISASP is the statewide standardized test administered by Iowa public schools.
What does "% Proficient" mean?
It is the share of students at the school who performed at grade level or above on the test, summed across the top two of four performance levels. A higher number is better.
What does 95.6% mean for English Language Arts at East Elementary School?
It means about 95.6 percent of students tested at East Elementary School performed at grade level or above on the ISASP English Language Arts test in 2024-25. The statewide average for Iowa that year was 73.6%. The other students fell into the lower performance levels.
How is the state average calculated?
It is a weighted average, not a simple average of each school's number. We multiply each public school's score by how many of its students tested, add those together for all schools in Iowa, and divide by the total students tested that year. This way a big school with 1,500 students counts more than a small school with 50 students, which is the right way to ask "how did the typical student do this year?". District and county averages on this page use the same method, just scoped to that district or county.
Where does this data come from?
Iowa Department of Education, Iowa State Assessment of Student Progress (ISASP). School-level data by grade and subject from educate.iowa.gov. Headline metric is the cumulative "Proficient" rate (Proficient + Advanced, top 2 of 3 ISASP levels).
How often is it updated?
ISASP is administered once a year (spring). Results are released by the state in the summer or early fall. We refresh this page after each annual release.
