The top reported proficiency rate is 79% in Math. The lowest is 64% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Wilder Elementary School
Wilder Elementary School serves students from kindergarten through fifth grade in Indianola, a growing Warren County community south of Des Moines. The school sits on the western edge of town on Euclid Avenue, part of the Indianola Community School District, which operates four elementary schools feeding into a single middle school and high school. Indianola itself functions as a suburban city with a compact downtown, Simpson College as a civic anchor, and a mix of residential neighborhoods and manufacturing employers. Housing values in the area have risen modestly in recent years, reflecting the region's steady growth, and the typical commute is car-dependent, with many residents traveling north to Des Moines for work.
Wilder’s student body is predominantly white, with small shares of Hispanic, multiracial, Black, and Asian students. More than a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a meaningful share that places the school among its peers. The school’s enrollment is spread fairly evenly across the elementary grades, with slightly larger numbers in the lower primary years.
On the state’s ISASP assessments, Wilder’s results show a notable gap between mathematics and English language arts. Math proficiency is strong, with a large majority of students meeting or exceeding state standards. English language arts proficiency is lower, with roughly two-thirds of students reaching that bar, a soft spot a parent may want to explore further with the school. Science proficiency in the tested grades is also in that same range. When compared with other elementary schools across Warren County, Wilder’s combined proficiency across subjects sits in the bottom quartile, a position that reflects the gap in literacy scores more than a broad weakness. The district itself recently adopted a new evidence-based literacy curriculum across all elementary schools, launched in the 2024-25 school year, which is directly relevant here: parents curious about the literacy results and what is being done to raise them may find it useful to ask how that rollout is going.
State testing data from prior years was not available, so there is no trend line to show whether scores are improving or declining. The single year of results provides a baseline, but not a trajectory.
Wilder is a regular public school with no charter or magnet designation. No Title I status was reported, despite the moderate share of students from lower-income households. Civil rights data, discipline records, and chronic absenteeism rates were not available, so there is no public picture of school climate or equity from those angles. Staffing ratios, teacher experience, and class sizes are also not part of the available record. For a parent trying to understand daily conditions in the building, those are gaps worth filling through a conversation with the principal or a visit.
The district recently renewed its Physical Plant and Equipment Levy, giving it a stable funding source for facilities and technology. A large auditorium and high school renovation project is underway on the high school campus, funded through state sales tax revenue and that levy. Those investments do not directly affect Wilder, but they signal a district with capacity to maintain its buildings and update its infrastructure over time.
Wilder Elementary offers a straightforward elementary program in a community where housing is moderately priced for the Des Moines area, the schools are central to civic life, and the district is making targeted moves on curriculum and facilities. The proficiency results suggest a school that gets solid results in math but has room to grow in reading and science, and the literacy curriculum change is one piece of work already in motion. For a family that values a suburban small-city setting and is comfortable asking about how the school addresses its weaker subject-area results, Wilder is a plausible fit. Families who prioritize very strong test scores across all subjects will want to look closely at how the literacy scores trend in the coming years.
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