Cedar Rapids: Improving access to advanced coursework in middle and high schools

Cedar Rapids Community School District Case Study

15,000 students | 3,000 teachers | 6 middle schools | 4 high schools | 88.3% graduation rate

Executive Summary

With the second largest student enrollment in the state of Iowa, Cedar Rapids Community School District strives to ensure every learner is future-ready. Every aspect of the district’s work is grounded in a guiding philosophy of continuous improvement.

Facing a major transition to a new student information system and block scheduling—combined with a changing student population—Cedar Rapids needed to ensure their scheduling practices weren’t creating unintended barriers to advanced coursework.

The district partnered with Abl, no a BetterLesson company, to conduct a comprehensive audit of scheduling data across its middle and high schools, analyzing patterns in course enrollment, teacher workloads, and student access to rigorous coursework.

The results were transformative: The district identified and addressed blockers to advanced course enrollment, with one high school adopting automatic Algebra 1 enrollment after seeing how this practice dramatically increased student success. Teachers gained more balanced student loads, and district leaders secured staff buy-in for data-informed policy changes—including new course minimums and scheduling practices that better serve both students and educators.

The challenge: Increasing access to advanced coursework amid district changes

Going into the 2019-2020 school year, Cedar Rapids planned to switch Student Information System providers and move from a 7-period day to a block schedule.

The student body was becoming increasingly diverse, with rising enrollment for students of color and English learner students.

Cedar Rapids engaged Abl, now a BetterLesson company, to help them better understand how well their middle and high schools were addressing access to rigorous and advanced coursework, maximizing resource efficiency, and optimizing teaching and learning.

The solution: Districtwide scheduling analysis and action planning

Abl conducted an analysis of student, teacher, and room scheduling data, including:

Efficiency: Strategic utilization of resources

• Do class sizes vary widely across schools or programs?
• Are staff effectively distributed across the school district?

Data Health: Accuracy and quality of information in the SIS

• Are names of academic departments consistent in schools across the district?
• Are the data about the capacity of rooms and courses accurate?

Abl’s data analysis identified trends that help Cedar Rapids leadership pursue the following goals.

The impact: Addressing gaps across each school

Expanded access to advanced courses

• The audit found disparities across student groups regarding enrollment in rigorous courses vs. intervention courses.
• Department heads determined that enrollment practices varied across schools and limited access to advanced courses for some student groups.

Discovering the link between enrollment policies and course access helped Cedar Rapids schools share best practices for offering more students advanced learning opportunities.

For example: relying on teacher recommendations to determine Algebra 1 enrollment for 9th graders resulted in disparities among students taking Algebra 1.

And yet, another school found that when all 9th grade students were automatically enrolled in Algebra 1, many more were successful than predicted. What’s more, the practice helped more students access advanced courses throughout their high school careers.

Seeing this example, an additional high school in Cedar Rapids district has adopted this approach for the ‘19-20 school year as part of their school-wide equity goal.

Balanced student loads – and teacher capacity

Some schools were found to have significantly higher student loads than others – as measured by how many distinct students a staff member interacts with.

The higher the student load, the more relationships with students and their families an educator must maintain, the more assignments they are responsible for assessing, etc.) This put an imbalanced burden on those teachers and limited the individualized attention students received.

Data on exactly how student loads varied for different teachers at different schools helped Cedar Rapids counselors to build class rosters that gave students access to smaller class sizes and teachers a more manageable student load. Comparing average class sizes, teacher preps, and advanced course offerings across the district’s high schools has guided strategic planning for future FTE considerations.

Effective change management facilitated by in-depth data analyses

As a 3rd party analyzing and presenting the scheduling data, we helped Cedar Rapids school and district leaders see the unintended tradeoffs their previous schedules had allowed.

Staff buy-in for changes to the schedule increased when they understood how previous practices had negatively impacted their students and colleagues.

Our findings garnered staff support for adopting new data informed policies. For example: our analysis showed that when multiple science courses were offered every semester, some (like AP Physics C) had low enrollment while more standard science courses had enrollments of 30+ students.

The district adopted a 15-student minimum for courses with low enrollment and began offering them every other semester rather than every semester. This kept class sizes balanced and limited the number of preps for teachers.

Conclusion: Data-driven insights that drive lasting change

Through a comprehensive scheduling audit, Cedar Rapids Community School District gained the insights needed to make meaningful improvements in student access to rigorous coursework, student loads, and districtwide capacity to implement high-impact change.

Most importantly, the audit revealed that the right changes in scheduling practices could unlock significant opportunities for students—particularly those who had been underrepresented in advanced coursework. For example: by moving from subjective teacher recommendations to automatic enrollment policies in courses like Algebra 1, Cedar Rapids opened doors for students who might otherwise have been overlooked.

The partnership between Cedar Rapids and Abl, now a BetterLesson company, demonstrates how third-party data analysis can serve as a catalyst for change. When school and district leaders could see objective evidence of scheduling inefficiencies and inequities, they were empowered to take action—with full staff support.

As Cedar Rapids continues its commitment to continuous improvement and ensuring every learner is future-ready, the scheduling audit has provided a solid foundation for ongoing strategic planning and resource allocation decisions that prioritize both equity and excellence.