The top reported proficiency rate is 60% in Math. The lowest is 44% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Wright Elementary School
Wright Elementary School serves students from preschool through fifth grade in the Cedar Rapids Community School District. The school sits on the northeast side of the city, a family-oriented neighborhood within a mid-sized city that is the economic hub of Eastern Iowa. Cedar Rapids is known for its grain-processing industry, anchored by large facilities from companies such as Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, General Mills, and a major Quaker Oats mill. Major employers also include Collins Aerospace, CRST, and Aegon’s U.S. headquarters. The city has seen steady growth in its metropolitan area and recently announced a data center project that is the largest economic development in its history.
The student population at Wright Elementary is economically diverse, with a substantial share of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. The school’s racial and ethnic composition is varied: the largest single group is white students, and the remainder of the enrollment is made up of Black, Hispanic, students identifying as two or more races, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and American Indian or Alaska Native students. The school serves a relatively small enrollment for an elementary school in the district. Information on the share of students with disabilities and English learners was not available from the data provided.
In terms of academic performance, Wright Elementary’s students take the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress, or ISASP, for grades three through five. In the most recent year of available testing data, a little over half of students met proficiency in English language arts, and a similar share met proficiency in math. The school’s performance in science was lower, with less than half of students reaching the proficiency bar. Compared to other schools across Linn County, Wright Elementary’s overall proficiency across tested subjects places it in the bottom quartile. Because this is a single year of data, there is no trend available to show whether performance is moving upward or downward.
Wright Elementary does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report. The school is a regular public school, not a charter, and its magnet status was not listed in the data. The Cedar Rapids district has made several recent changes that could affect families at Wright Elementary. The district has been executing a multi-year elementary facilities master plan, which included opening three new schools—Maple Grove Elementary, West Willow Elementary, and Trailside Elementary—while closing or consolidating older buildings and redrawing attendance boundaries district-wide. A new high school option, City View Community High School, opened with a community-based, experiential learning model. The district also approved budget reductions for the 2024-25 school year, including staff cuts and program adjustments, to address a budget shortfall driven by declining enrollment and state per-pupil aid that has not kept pace with inflation. These district-wide changes mean class sizes, program availability, and resource allocation may feel different than in past years.
For a family considering Wright Elementary, the school offers a setting where a large share of students come from lower-income households, and where academic proficiency in core subjects is below the average level of its county peers. The school is part of a district undergoing significant facilities upgrades and fiscal belt-tightening, so families may want to ask the school directly about current class sizes, special education and English learner supports, and how the recent boundary changes affect their address. The larger Cedar Rapids community provides a range of cultural institutions, a strong industrial and commercial job base, and steady metro-area growth, all of which contribute to the context in which the school operates.
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