The top reported proficiency rate is 68% in Science. The lowest is 63% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Horace Mann Elementary School
Horace Mann Elementary School serves kindergarten through fifth grade in Ottumwa, a mid-sized micropolitan center in southeastern Iowa. The city is historically rooted in farm-equipment manufacturing and meatpacking, with major employers including JBS Live Pork, John Deere Ottumwa Works, and the Ottumwa Community School District itself. The Des Moines River splits Ottumwa into northern and southern halves, and the school is located on North Court Street in the northern part of the city. Housing values in the area are well below both the state and national benchmarks, reflecting a more affordable market.
The school enrolls a student body that is majority white, with a meaningful Hispanic presence and smaller shares of Black, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and Asian students. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on students with disabilities and English learners was not reported, so a parent may want to ask the school directly about the level of specialized support available.
State testing results from the ISASP are available for math, English language arts, and science. In each subject, the share of students scoring proficient or above falls roughly in the middle range. Compared to other elementary schools within the broader set of schools in Wapello County districts, Horace Mann’s overall proficiency index sits below the midpoint of that group. This comparison set is a practical frame of reference, but it is a small cohort of only a few school systems, so even modest differences among them can shift relative placement. A single year of data is available, and there is no prior trend to show whether performance is improving or declining. The school’s participation rate on the tests was very high.
The school itself is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet. The Ottumwa Community School District undertook a grade reconfiguration for the 2024-25 school year, reassigning which schools serve which grades. This change directly affects school assignments and transitions for families, so parents should confirm that Horace Mann’s current KG-5 configuration aligns with their child’s planned path through the district.
Horace Mann is an elementary school only, so there are no graduation rate data, no high school course access to assess, and no information on chronic absenteeism. The school’s civic and community context is a working industrial city with a revitalized downtown, a historic public library, and bus service operated by the Ottumwa Transit Authority. The school sits within a district that is one of the top employers in the area, meaning many families may have a direct connection to the school system through their own jobs.
For a family considering this school, the picture is of a neighborhood elementary in an affordable, industrial city, with academic performance that is in the middle range relative to nearby districts. The grade reconfiguration is a recent structural change worth understanding, and the lack of certain data points on special populations means a conversation with the school about support services would be worthwhile. The school’s size for an elementary is moderate, and the student body is diverse in its composition, though white students form the largest group.
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