Iowa DE releases Condition of Education Report

On Jan. 19 the Iowa Department of Education released the latest edition of the annual Condition of Education report. The report provides a wide range of state-level data, including shifts in student populations and demographics, teacher salaries and characteristics, student achievement results and school financial information. You can read the full report here or peruse some of the highlights below.

Students in Public Schools

• 483,451: The number of students enrolled in Iowa’s public schools during the 2015-16 school year, up from 480,772 the year before. This represents the fifth enrollment increase in as many years, following a 17-year decline in enrollment.
• 22.6%: The percent of minority student enrollment in 2015-16, up from 21.8 percent the year before.
• 5.7%: The percent of public school students whose primary language is not English (English Language Learners) in the 2015-16 school year. This represents no change from the year before.
• 71%: The percent of students from the Class of 2016 who took chemistry, up from 67.4 percent the year before. From the Class of 2016, 30.7 percent of students took physics, up from 28.8 percent the year before.
• 45.3%: The percent of students from the Class of 2016 who took higher-level mathematics, including calculus, statistics and trigonometry. This is up from 41.3 percent the year before.
• 22.1: The ACT composite score among students in the Class of 2015 who took the college-entrance exam, down from 22.2 the year before.
• 68%: The percent of students in the Class of 2016 who took the ACT, up from 67 percent the year before.
• 90.8%: The percent of students in the Class of 2015 who graduated in four years, up slightly from 90.5 percent the year before.

Technology Readiness

• 76.2%: The percent of schools in the state that have a bandwidth of at least 100 MB, which is considered the minimum bandwidth requirement for digital learning.

Schools, Teachers, Finance

• Iowa’s average teacher salary increased 2 percent in 2015-16 to $56,449, up from $55,356 in 2014-15.
• Iowa’s average teacher salary climbed to 23rd in the national rankings from 25th the year before; the Midwestern ranking remained the same at sixth out of 12 states.
• There were 34,727 teachers during the 2015-16 school year, essentially the same from the year before (34,725).
• There were 336 school districts in 2015-16, down two from the year before. There are 333 districts in the current school year.