The Mid-Prairie School Board heard a report on the district’s Iowa Statewide Assessment of Student Progress testing data at its meeting on Monday, leading to a discussion on changing the process and structure for determining administrator pay.

Test scores improved in all grades 5th through 8th in both Math and English and Language Arts (ELA). The middle school improved 5% school-wide in both categories to 78.4% proficient in math and 79.7% proficient in ELA. The only drop at the middle school was science, dropping three tenths of a percent to 70.2% proficient. 

Superintendent Brian Stone described the excitement he’s seen around the scores, “I don’t know exactly what Mr. Bartels, our middle school principal, has arranged, but apparently I’m a part of some celebration. And I already told him I’m not shaving my head, but the kids are excited about it. Those are just the things that went into play with our scores improving, and as we move forward with our strategic plan and providing teachers with more time to prepare the content that they provide to the students even better, the sky’s the limit.”

Results were less promising at the high school level, where each grade 9th through 11th saw areas of falloff. For example, this year’s junior class had an 11-point drop to 64% ELA proficiency from their scores last year. However, in science this year’s sophomore class improved 7 points up to 70% proficiency from the last time they were evaluated as eighth graders. 

Stone added he was confident in his staff, “We’ve got the right people, we just need to know where the right work is, and I feel very comfortable with that moving forward.”

The discrepancy across buildings ignited a discussion about administrator pay structure, with board president Jake Snider raising the idea to switch to merit-based pay, directly comparing the principals in each building, “One [principal] is considerably underproducing and one’s killing it. Why would they both get the same raise?”

The board ultimately passed a 4% increase for all administrators unanimously, continuing a tradition of matching the increase that teachers received. Multiple board members said that they wanted to re-examine the process for next year, but felt it was unfair to change the standard now as the school year was coming to an end.