Annual Condition of Education Report Available From Iowa Dept. of Education

Last Thursday 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. The Condition of Education report contains the most recent data through the 2013-14 school year, unless otherwise noted.

Highlights include: 
Students in Public Schools 

• 478,921: The number of students enrolled in Iowa’s public schools during the 2013-14 school year, up from 476,245 the year before. 
• 21.1%: The percentage of minority student enrollment, up from 20.2 percent in 2012-13 school year and 5.5 percent in 1990. 
• 41.1%: The percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, up slightly from 41 percent a year ago and up from 27 percent 13 years ago. 
• 89.7%: The percentage of students from the Class of 2013 who graduated from high school in four years, up slightly from the year before (89.3 percent). 
• 41.3%: The percentage of students from the Class of 2014 who took a higher-level mathematics course, including calculus and trigonometry. This is an increase from 40.2 percent the year before. 
• 67.2%: The percentage of students from the Class of 2014 who took chemistry. Twenty-seven percent took physics. 
• 22: The ACT composite score among students in the Class of 2014 who took the college-entrance exam, down slightly from 22.1 the year before. 
• 68%: The percentage of students in the Class of 2014 who took the ACT, up 2 percent from the year before. 

Technology Readiness 

• The number of computers available to Iowa students continues to increase. In the 2013-14 school year, there were about 1.4 students per computer. This compares to 4.1 students per computer in the 2000-01 school year. 
• The percentage of schools equipped with 50 MB or more of bandwidth climbed to 60.1 percent in the 2013-14 school year from 44.4 percent in 2012-13. 

Schools, Teachers, Finance 

• Iowa’s average teacher salary increased 3.7 percent to $51,937 in the 2013-14 school year.
• Iowa’s average teacher salary remains near the median of states (26th) in the national rankings. Iowa’s Midwestern ranking improved to 6th from 7th out of 12 states from the 2011-12 school year to 2012-13. 
• There were 34,509 teachers in Iowa schools during the 2013-14 school year, up from 33,610 in 2000-2001. 
• There were 346 school districts during the 2013-14 school year, down two from the year before. There are 338 school districts in the current school year. 
• The state’s per-pupil expense was $9,609 in the 2012-13 school year, down from $9,645 the year before. 

The full report is available on the Iowa Department of Education’s website.