Iowa City schools pilot team-teaching in three elementary buildings to boost achievement and teacher wellness

Iowa City Community School District staff presented a planned pilot of team teaching for elementary grades at an Education Committee meeting, saying the change aims to raise student proficiency and give teachers more focused professional practice. The district plans a schoolwide pilot in three buildings — Kirkwood, Horn and Lenny — for grades 3–5 with limited second-grade trials, and nine additional schools will each field at least one team to try elements of the model.

District staff said the pilot responds to declining assessment and universal screening trends and is intended to improve student growth by increasing collective teacher efficacy and allowing teachers to concentrate on fewer content areas. “This has been a fabulous team of educators that we've had the opportunity to meet with twice, in the last, like, 5 to 6 weeks to kinda really build out what team teaching could look like for us here in ICCSD,” said Eliza (staff member), who led the presentation.

The district described a program model where two teachers in the same grade share responsibility for a cohort of students (roughly 25–27 pupils). For two-section grades, one teacher might focus on math and science while the other focuses on English language arts and social studies; larger schools would adapt the pairings to fit three- or four-section configurations. Staff said students would remain with the same cohort but typically move between classrooms (the classroom “stays” and students transition) so each teacher’s room can remain set up for particular content.

Staff emphasized four monitoring areas for the pilot: student academic outcomes, student connections to school (attendance and survey results), teacher efficacy (progress on the district's implementation-continuum measures and retention), and teacher wellness (attendance, PD participation and direct wellness measures). District presenters said elementary social-emotional surveys will move from the current tool to Panorama and that specific survey items will be tracked to monitor students’ sense of connection.

Principals from the three pilot schools volunteered to participate and staff said the pilot will include scheduling assistance and targeted professional learning to align content-focused PD with the teachers’ assigned subject responsibilities. The group said one practical scheduling change already under consideration is modestly lengthening some instructional blocks (they described flexing a block from roughly 80 minutes to about 85 minutes) to allow collaborative planning and deeper instruction.

Board members expressed support for the goals and asked for careful data collection and community input. Several board members requested parent surveys be added to the measurable outcomes and urged the district to disaggregate results by school and subgroup. Committee members also raised research-based cautions: some studies of elementary departmentalization or similar models show mixed effects on reading and math; other studies show gains in science and higher teacher retention in some contexts. District staff and board members agreed the district will monitor short- and longer-term results and report back to the board.

No formal board vote or policy change on the pilot was recorded at the meeting; the only formal action taken during the session was approval of the Education Committee minutes from the April 15, 2025 meeting. Staff asked for and received the committee’s support to proceed with the pilot work and data collection. Staff invited board members to view school events and pilot activities planned for the coming weeks to observe the model in practice.

The district said it will begin the pilot implementation over the summer and into next school year, refine measures and report progress to the board. The presentation and the committee discussion focused on how to maintain cohort consistency for students, include intervention and special-education schedules, and ensure that the pilot does not reduce time for services such as lunch, recess, ELL or special education.