The top reported proficiency rate is 90% in English language arts. The lowest is 88% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Helen a Hansen Elementary School
Helen A Hansen Elementary School is a regular public school in Cedar Falls, Iowa, serving prekindergarten through sixth grade. It belongs to the Cedar Falls Comm School District. Parents looking at this school will find a place with unusually strong academic results, a student body that is predominantly white with modest economic diversity, and a setting in a stable residential community.
On state assessments, which for an elementary school cover math, English language arts, and science in grades three through six, the school’s results sit well above the midpoint when compared with other elementary schools in Black Hawk County. In fact, the school lands in the top quartile of the county’s districts on an overall proficiency measure across those subjects. The proficiency rates across math, reading, and science are all high, and participation in the state tests exceeded well over nine in ten eligible students. The message is straightforward: students here, as a whole, perform at strong academic levels relative to their peers in the county.
What the data does not yet provide is a multi-year trend. Only a single year’s results are available, so a parent cannot see whether this performance is rising, holding steady, or recently changed. That is a gap worth noting, and a parent may want to ask the school or district for historical scores to get a fuller picture.
The student body enrolls a sizeable number of children for an elementary school spanning these grade levels. The population is heavily white, with the next largest groups being students who identify as two or more races, then Asian, then Black, then Hispanic, and a very small number of American Indian or Alaska Native students. Roughly one in six students qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, a share that is modest compared to many public school districts nationally. Data on the share of students with disabilities or those classified as English learners was not available; a parent may want to ask the school directly about these dimensions of student support.
Cedar Falls is a city that anchors the northern part of Black Hawk County. The housing market in the area where the school sits shows home values near the middle of the range for the state, with rents at a level that consumes a manageable share of a typical household’s income. A parent reading this might infer that the neighborhood around the school is not a low-cost area, but it also does not appear to be an outlier on affordability pressures. The broader economic context includes mortgage rates and unemployment at national averages, giving no strong local warning signals.
The district brief, which looked for recent parent-relevant changes such as bond measures, curriculum shifts, or property tax adjustments, found no confirmed lasting changes of that kind in the available time frame. That does not mean nothing has happened, only that this specific search did not surface it. A parent may want to check the district’s own communications for any upcoming budget or program changes.
Since this school serves only through sixth grade, there is no graduation rate to report, and no chronic absenteeism data appeared in the available civil rights fields. Those measures simply do not apply at this grade band or were not reported, so their absence does not reflect a weakness.
The school is not a charter or a magnet, and its Title I status was not provided. It is described as a regular public school, which means it follows the district’s standard curriculum and attendance boundaries.
Who might this fit? Families who prioritize consistent, above-average academic performance in a conventional public elementary setting will find plenty to like here. The student body is not especially diverse racially or economically, which may be a factor for some families and neutral for others. The lack of trend data and the missing special-population counts are soft spots in the available information; a family that needs a clear picture of services for students with disabilities or English learners should follow up with the school directly before deciding. For most families, the core academic story is a strong one, backed by a solid countywide comparison.
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