Throughout the past school year the Adel-DeSoto-Minburn School District had student achievement goals it was looking to reach. 

The “Wildly Important Goal” for the district was to decrease pre-kindergarten through 11th grade the amount of students identified as not yet proficient in reading on the identified state level assessment from 25-percent to 15-percent. Superintendent Greg Dufoe says while they didn’t reach their goal, he’s happy with the progress that was made. 

“While we didn’t meet that goal we did have a seven-percent reduction which is really unprecedented. While we didn’t meet our goal, it was super aggressive and we couldn’t be more pleased. The gains that we made and the improvements that we made we think will catapult us into the future.”

Some of the decreases included a 3-percent decrease in not proficient in math for the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress (ISASP) for 3rd-11th grade. Also, the Formative Assessment System for Teachers (FAST) scores also decreased in reading with the largest being 37-percent for pre-K/K compared to last year. Dufoe tells Raccoon Valley Radio more work needs to be done.

“Our mission is high levels of learning for all students and that is one thing we really addressed is that if we are going to claim that as our mission then having even one-percent of students who can’t read at a proficient level is too many.”

Dufoe says this year’s worth of learning on how to do things differently will provide a lot of momentum moving into the next school year to try to achieve the goal.