North Cedar Community School District

The North Cedar Community School District consists of 3 schools: 2 elementary schools (North Cedar Lowden Elementary Center and North Cedar Mechanicsville Elementary Center) and 1 junior/senior high school (North Cedar Junior/Senior High School). The district has seen a mix of strong and declining academic performance across its schools.

The standout school in the district is the North Cedar Mechanicsville Elementary Center, which has consistently high performance, ranking in the top 160-340 elementary schools in Iowa over the past 3 years and earning 4 out of 5 stars from SchoolDigger. The school boasts impressive test scores, with 70.6% to 90.9% of students proficient or better in English Language Arts and 73.7% to 95.2% proficient or better in Mathematics across grades 3-6. In contrast, the North Cedar Junior/Senior High School has seen a significant decline in its statewide ranking, dropping from 99th out of 332 Iowa high schools in 2021-2022 to 292nd out of 338 in 2023-2024, and its proficiency rates in English Language Arts and Mathematics have also declined across most grade levels compared to the state averages.

Across the district, the schools have relatively high free/reduced lunch rates, ranging from 40.82% to 50.94%, indicating a significant population of economically disadvantaged students. This may be a contributing factor to the academic performance, as research has shown that socioeconomic status can impact student achievement. The district could focus its efforts on addressing the declining performance at the high school level and exploring strategies to support economically disadvantaged students, while also analyzing the factors behind the strong performance at the Mechanicsville Elementary Center to apply those insights to other schools in the district.