The top reported proficiency rate is 54% in Math. The lowest is 44% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Rogers Elementary School
Rogers Elementary School serves students from prekindergarten through fourth grade in the Marshalltown Community School District. It is a regular public school located in Marshalltown, the county seat of Marshall County, a city that functions as a regional employment hub with deep industrial roots in pork processing, valve manufacturing, HVAC production, and tool making. Major employers include JBS Swift, Emerson Fisher Controls, Lennox Industries, and the school district itself, which is one of the largest employers in town. The city has a historic downtown centered on the Marshall County Courthouse, which was heavily damaged by an EF3 tornado several years ago, and the community has since focused on recovery and downtown redevelopment. Population has been relatively stable in recent years.
Rogers is one of several elementary schools feeding into the district’s middle and high schools. The school’s enrollment is small for its grade band, which means class sizes and building scale are likely manageable for young children transitioning into a formal school setting. A very substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating that the school serves a population with significant economic need. The student body is diverse: a large share of students identify as Hispanic, a sizable share as White, and the remainder as Asian, Black, multiracial, or Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Data on special education identification and English learner classification was not available in the records used here, though given the demographic profile a family might want to ask the school directly about the supports available for students learning English or receiving special services.
On the Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress (ISASP) for the most recent school year, the school’s overall proficiency across tested subjects placed it below the midpoint relative to other districts in Marshall County, in the bottom quartile among that comparison set. About half of students scored at or above proficiency in math, while a smaller share did so in reading. These are the only assessment data available, as the school serves grades that are tested under state accountability, so there is no graduation rate to report. The school has only one year of proficiency data in the available records, so there is no trend line to show whether performance is moving in a particular direction.
Program offerings, staffing ratios, and course access data were not available in the information provided. The school’s website may carry details about enrichment activities, class size, and support services, but those specifics were not part of this profile. The district headquarters are in Marshalltown, and the school itself is located on Summit Street in a residential area of the city.
For a parent considering Rogers, the profile that emerges is of a small, high-poverty elementary school in a regional industrial city, where the student body is diverse and the academic results on state assessments suggest that a parent may want to look into what academic supports and interventions the school offers, especially in reading. The school’s role is providing the foundation years for children before they move on to a larger elementary or intermediate setting within the district. The community context is stable, with a mix of manufacturing and service employment, a downtown recovering from a natural disaster, and housing values that are modest relative to national benchmarks, making the area potentially accessible for families who work in the city or commute from surrounding rural areas. Families who want a more complete picture of the early elementary experience here should visit the school, talk to staff about their approach to literacy instruction and support for students from low-income backgrounds, and learn about how the school connects with the broader district’s curriculum and feeder pattern.
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