The Kansas State Department of Education says the standard of education in Iola is excellent. The Iola school district earned 19 Standard of Excellence honors for academic performance — 10 in reading, eight in math and one in science — during the 2010-2011 school year.
USD 257 Superintendent of Schools Brian Pekarek said achieving Standard of Excellence (SOE) in key learning areas like math and reading speaks to the hard work and dedication Iola teachers commit every day.
“I know our teachers are doing everything possible that they can do to educate our kids in the most effective manner,” he said.
Evaluations of student learning are measured within every district building and grade level. Schools receive SOEs by achieving benchmarks building-wide or at each grade level. Iola Middle School, Lincoln Elementary and McKinley Elementary each earned building-wide SOE in math and reading. Lincoln also earned building-wide SOEs in science. Iola High met the SOE mark in reading.
IMS Principal Jack Stanley said he has come to expect the SOE awards now that a culture set on succeeding has been set within the district.
“We strive real hard here. Our teachers absolutely are focused on all the state standards. We work hard on it all year long. We try to promote the test to do our best,” he said. “My personal philosophy is to find out if we are making gains.”
If the state honors are any indicator, USD 257 is making gains. The 19 SOEs is three more than the district earned just two years ago and seven more than the 12 in 2007 — the first year USD 257 earned its first SOEs.
Still, Pekarek said he isn’t satisfied.
“If we’re satisfied with something then we stay put,” he said. “We either go up or down so we need to keep rising to the occasion.”
Failing to meet state standards in any criteria was Jefferson. The district’s largest elementary school went from five SOEs in 2005 to earning none in 2011, a reality Pekarek said administrators are working diligently to fix. To address the issue, he said district administrators are pursuing resources to better equip Jefferson teachers to increase student engagement in the classroom and Jefferson teachers have been attending workshops with KSDE.
“When the students are engaged and the curriculum is matched up, all the pistons are going and everything is going well. So engagement is everything,” Pekarek said.
The teaching techniques need to change, he said, because the backgrounds of Jefferson students are changing.
“Jefferson school has changed dramatically. More kids have moved in that are of poverty level than we’ve had before,” Pekarek said. “We know that it’s much more of a challenge to educate kids of poverty than not of poverty. The poverty level has grown so our needs are more. We have to adapt as well.”
Iola gets state nod for school standards
