The top reported proficiency rate is 73% in Math. The lowest is 56% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Oakland Elementary
Oakland Elementary is a small, regular public school in the town of Oakland, Iowa, serving children from prekindergarten through second grade. Because it serves only the earliest grades, it does not administer the state’s summative assessments, which start in third grade, and it has no graduation rate. A parent evaluating this school will need to consider it as the foundation of a longer academic journey, since the students feed into Riverside Elementary (grades PK-3, also in Oakland), then Riverside Middle School in nearby Carson, and eventually Riverside Community High School in Oakland.
The school is part of the Riverside Community School District, which was created in the 1990s from the merger of the Carson-Macedonia and Oakland districts. The district brief turned up no recent tax, policy, or referendum changes of note. That lack of disruption is itself a piece of information: a parent new to the area is unlikely to walk into a district in the middle of a major reorganization.
Oakland itself is a small rural town that, according to publicly reported history, once served primarily as an agricultural service center and is now increasingly functioning as a bedroom community for the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area. Its population has grown modestly in recent years. Home values and estimated household incomes have risen, and the cost of living remains below the national average. The town has a compact downtown, several parks, a swimming pool, a golf course, a community center, a library, and access to the West Nishnabotna River. The setting is quiet and car-dependent, with no public transit identified. For a family deciding where to live, the combination of a short commute to a metro area and a small-town environment is a central draw.
The student body at Oakland Elementary is predominantly white, with a substantial Hispanic population and a small share of students who identify as two or more races. African American, Asian, and Native American students are each represented in very small numbers. Close to half of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which means the school serves a noticeable share of families with lower household income. Data on students with disabilities and English learners was not available for this report, so a parent with a child who has an Individualized Education Plan or is an English learner would want to ask the school directly about its staffing and supports.
Because the school serves only prekindergarten through second grade, the only state testing data is from a single year before the pandemic, for third-graders who would have been enrolled elsewhere. That data is too old and from a different grade level to say anything meaningful about current instruction at Oakland Elementary. What a parent can assess instead are the early-learning conditions: small size, local setting, and the district’s broader record.
The district overall, when compared to other districts in Pottawattamie County, places in the bottom quartile on a combined proficiency index across tested subjects and grades. This comparison is based on the district’s schools that serve tested grades, not on Oakland Elementary itself. A parent should consider that the academic trajectory students begin in the early grades at Oakland may continue into a district whose middle and high school results, relative to county peers, are on the lower side. It is fair to ask the district what its plan is for raising those results and how the early elementary program feeds into that plan.
For a family that values a very small school environment, a rural small-town setting with metro-area access, and a district that has remained stable in recent years, Oakland Elementary provides a straightforward entry point. The academic record of the district as a whole is a soft spot, and the school’s lack of testing data in its own grade band means there is no direct measure of its current performance. A parent looking for a school with strong comparative test scores will want to look further into the district’s results at the upper elementary and secondary levels before making a decision.
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