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
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.
- 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)