As we reported, students in the Perry School District are making positive progress in terms of proficiency as evidenced by preliminary Iowa Assessment scores, but what next?

As Schools In Need of Assistance, the district needs to keep making strides in the right direction.

Teaching and Learning Director Kevin Vidergar says it comes down to finding the answers to a few simple questions.

“What do we want students to know?’ And we started on that this year by really focusing on the Iowa Core and what does it mean at each grade level.  Once we have a good handle on that question, then the question becomes ‘how will we know when students have learned what we want them to know?’  So that’s the whole idea of assessment and how do we figure out to what degree have kids learned.  And then the question is ‘so how are we teaching it? and at the same time we ask ‘so what do we do with the kids that are struggling to learn and what are we doing with the kids that already know it” says Vidergar.

As far as a goal for the future, Vidergar says at this point they just want to keep improving and do better than the schools have ever done before.