I X L Elem, Arkansas City KS - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on I X L Elem

I X L Elementary sits on a rural road outside Arkansas City, serving students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade as part of the Arkansas City public school district. The school is a small one, with enrollment that is typical for an elementary school serving this part of Cowley County. A large share of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the economic realities of the community.

Arkansas City itself is a community shaped by industrial shifts. Once anchored by oil refining, flour milling, and meatpacking, the city lost major employers in the 1990s and 2000s when Morrell Meats and the Total Petroleum refinery closed. Creekstone Farms Premium Beef has since become the dominant employer, and a Walmart Supercenter opened more recently. The population has been relatively stable with a slight decline over the long term. Downtown has seen revitalization efforts, including streetscape improvements and the conversion of the Burford Theatre into a community arts center. Cowley College is located in the downtown core. Housing in the area is well below national and state benchmarks.

The school itself is not a charter or magnet school. Its grade span, PK through fifth, means no graduation rate applies, and there is no state testing data for the pre-kindergarten through second-grade students. For the tested grades, the most recent state assessment results showed that students reached proficiency in English language arts at a rate that was meaningful though moderate, with performance rising somewhat as grade levels increased. Math proficiency rates across the tested grades were lower, a pattern that a parent may want to explore further with the school. In fifth grade science, proficiency was also lower. The state changed its cut scores for the assessments, making comparisons to prior years unreliable.

When placed against other districts in Cowley County, I X L Elementary's overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades lands in the bottom quartile. There were five districts in the county with data available for that comparison. This positioning is a fact that families weighing school options will want to consider alongside the school's other attributes.

The student body is majority white, with a substantial Hispanic population and smaller shares of students who are American Indian or Alaska Native, two or more races, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and Black. The school has no reported data on students with disabilities or English learner status, so it is not possible to see how those groups are served from this source. Similarly, information on discipline, staffing, attendance, and chronic absenteeism was not available in the data provided.

The district brief showed no major parent-relevant changes publicly reported in recent years, so there is no recent reorganization, boundary shift, or program overhaul to report from that source.

I X L Elementary is a rural school with a high-need student population, modest test results, and a community context of economic adjustment. For a family looking in this area, the school offers the small-scale setting of a neighborhood elementary, and the core question is likely how its academic support programs and classroom experience match a given child's needs given the present proficiency picture. Visiting and asking about the school's strategies in math and science, and how it supports students who are below grade level, would be a natural next step.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 315%

School 15% · District 27% · ▼ 11 pts below district

▼ 26 pts below state median · ▼ 18 pts below county median

Grade 418%

School 18% · District 26% · ▼ 8 pts below district

▼ 22 pts below state median · ▼ 15 pts below county median

Grade 524%

School 24% · District 26% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▼ 17 pts below state median · ▼ 12 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 337%

School 37% · District 39% · ▼ 2 pts below district

▼ 16 pts below state median · even with county median

Grade 441%

School 41% · District 36% · ▲ 5 pts above district

▼ 7 pts below state median · ▲ 1 pts above county median

Grade 541%

School 41% · District 32% · ▲ 9 pts above district

▼ 8 pts below state median · ▲ 4 pts above county median

Science

Grade 527%

School 27% · District 26% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 18 pts below state median · ▼ 4 pts below county median

This schoolArkansas City, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 5Lower-income42%Higher-income40%2 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 5Lower-income21%Higher-income30%9 pp gap