Summary:
Waterloo CUSD 5 includes five schools: three elementary schools, a junior high, and a high school, serving families from the elementary years through high school. The supplied 2025–26 proficiency results cover four schools; W J Zahnow Elementary School has no test-score results in the data. Across all reported grade-specific results, schools performed above the state comparison, with average advantages of 15 points in ELA, 16 in math, and 15 in science.
Waterloo Junior High School stands out in ELA, scoring 17 to 23 points above the state in grades 6 through 8. Rogers Elementary School leads in grade 3: its math result was 25 points above the state and its ELA result 23 points above. Gardner Elementary School was 21 points above the state in grade 5 science. The smallest advantage was at Waterloo High School, which was 6 points above the state in grade 10 PreACT ELA. Chronic absenteeism was below the state rate at all five schools, ranging from 4% at Rogers to 12% at Junior High.
Recent results are mixed: Waterloo High’s grade 11 ACT scores fell by 6 to 7 points, while its grade 9 and 10 PreACT math and science results generally improved. Junior High’s all-grades ELA and math results each rose 4 points; Rogers’ fell 4 points in ELA and 6 in math. SchoolDigger ranks the district 131st of 738, in the 82nd percentile with four stars; its school percentiles are 83 for Waterloo High, 80 for Junior High, and 80 for Gardner. Reported student-teacher ratios range from 14.7 at Zahnow to 17.1 at Waterloo High. All five schools report free/reduced lunch eligible figures for 2024–25, ranging from 18% to 25%. Because the schools serve different grades, their all-grades rates are not direct school-to-school comparisons, and Zahnow has no supplied test-score results.
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