Goodrell Middle School

Located at 3300 E. 29th Street, in Des Moines, Iowa, Goodrell Middle School is a reasonably sized intermediate school that educates 511 students (grades 6 through 8), one of the schools within Des Moines Independent Comm School District. Compared to the state average of about 400 students per school, that is 28% bigger than typical.

Goodrell Middle School is one of 59 schools operated by Des Moines Independent Comm School District, a district that serves 29,676 students overall.

On demographics, Goodrell Middle School logs that the most-represented group is White (33%), with the rest of the student body spread across multiple groups. Other groups include 32% Hispanic, 18% Black, 8% Asian, 7% multiracial. That is noticeably less White than the county at large, where the share is closer to 76%.

On the income-and-resources front, Staff filings list 33 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 15.3:1 students per teacher. That tracks the state average closely. Roughly 85% of students at Goodrell Middle School qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. By comparison, Polk County runs at roughly 49%, so the school's eligibility rate is somewhat above the surrounding baseline.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), Goodrell Middle School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 49.6%, the actual is 42.4%, a residual of -7.2 points.

Across the wider county, community-level numbers for Polk County indicate the typical household earns roughly $83,576 per year, roughly 40% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and roughly 7% of residents live below the federal poverty line. Goodrell Middle School is one of 137 public schools in Polk County (combined enrollment of about 77,436 students).

Nearest neighbor: Garton Elementary, around 0.6 miles off. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. Among the 8 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), Goodrell Middle School ranks 6th on composite proficiency, behind the local average of 47.8%.

The campus sits in a metropolitan setting.

Looking at the recent track record. Over the past 7-year window, the student count shrank 11%: 571 students in 2018 compared to 511 in 2025. Over the same period, the White share fell from 47% to 33%. Class-load math has rose: from 13.8:1 in 2018 to 15.3:1 in 2025.

On this page, the feed for Goodrell Middle School typically covers fundraisers, lost-and-found posts, and report-card season. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.