Iowa Coalition for Public Charter Schools

Why the Mission is Critical

Unacceptable Performance of Traditional Public Schools

  • Over 50% of students in Iowa’s 6 largest school districts are attending schools rated as below Acceptable by the state of Iowa in 2023.
  • That means well over 45,000 students in these school districts attended subpar schools.
  • Only 19% of the schools in these school districts were rated as above Acceptable by the state of Iowa.
  • This failure is persistent. For example, in Des Moines Public Schools:
    • 59% of DMPS schools were rated below Acceptable at least 3 out of the last 5 years (not including the 2020 COVID year)
    • 24% of DMPS schools were rated below Acceptable every year since 2018; 5 consecutive years (not including the 2020 COVID year)

 

Students in Iowa's 6 Largest Urban School Districts

School District % of Students Attending Schools Rated Below Acceptable # of Students Attending Schools Rated Below Acceptable
Davenport 77% 10,223
Des Moines 73% 21,127
Waterloo 57% 5,730
Sioux City 35% 4,995
Cedar Rapids 22% 3,236
Dubuque 15% 1,459
Overall 51% 46,770

Source- Iowa.gov- https://www.iaschoolperformance.gov/ECP/Home/Index

 

Ineffective Workforce Development Pipeline

  • The K-12 public school system in Iowa is not preparing students to become trained employees for our companies and industries.
  • Less than 50% of students graduating from Iowa’s high schools earn some form of postsecondary credential within 6 years of graduation. A credential could be any of the following: a professional licensure, certificate, Associate’s degree, or Bachelor’s degree.

District Comparison

Iowa's current PostSecondary Educational Attainment is at 48%

Public School District % of Graduates Earning a Postsecondary Credential
Cedar Rapids 46%
Davenport 33%
Des Moines 30%
Dubuque 46%
Sioux City 39%
Waterloo 29%

 

 

 

Source- Iowa.gov- https://reports.educateiowa.gov/PostSecondaryReadiness/home/STATEPREPTrendlines

 

Public Charter Schools Are a Big Part of the Solution

  • The 10 states seeing the most improvement in educational achievement since 1992 have an average of 260 public charter schools.

Source- US Department of Education Charter School Research

  • Public school districts that have seen 10% or more of their students leave to enroll in public charter schools have seen their own test scores improve (6% in Math and 3% in Reading) and saw their high school graduation rates improve by almost 3%.

Source- National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice.

 

Over the course of a K-12 education, that amounts to 208 days’ worth of additional reading learning, compared to 16 days from a traditional public school, and 78 days of math learning compared to 6 days at a traditional public school.

  • According to Stanford’s 2023 longitudinal study*, students attending public charter schools nationwide have demonstrated 16 additional days of learning per year in reading and 6 additional days in math compared to their peers in traditional public schools.
  • Over the course of a K-12 education, that amounts to 208 days’ worth of additional reading learning and 78 days of math learning.

* Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO)

 

 

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