Hawkeye State Education Coverage, Driven by Data
Education News & Data
Local education reporting from every corner of Iowa, grounded in Iowa Department of Education data.
Des Moines, Davenport, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, and Sioux City account for 20,801 of Iowa's 76,535 chronically absent students — 27.2% from 17.1% of enrollment.
Nearly half of Iowa's school districts hit their highest-ever graduation rate in 2024, while 87 districts posted their worst -- a bifurcated state where the middle ground is thinning.
Iowa's graduation story is increasingly a story of geography, with 18- to 26-point gaps between urban cores and surrounding suburbs across the Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and Quad Cities metros.
West Des Moines has a 31-point gap between its K-8 and computed high school chronic absence rates, the largest in Iowa's 2025 district data.
Iowa began reporting graduation rates for non-binary students in 2022, with a cohort that has grown from 15 to 73 students and a rate of 84% in 2024, above Black, English learner, and special education students.
Eight Iowa districts graduated fewer than 70% of students in 2024, double the number from the year before, with Fort Dodge and Burlington among the mid-size districts on the list.
Special education students in Iowa graduate at 70%, 18 points below the state average, and the gap has been stuck between 18 and 20 points for six straight years.
The gap between white and Black graduation rates in Iowa has held steady at 15-18 points for six years, even as the state's overall rate returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Des Moines Independent graduated 71% of students in 2024, down from 76% in 2019, while suburban Johnston and Waukee exceed 97% -- creating a 26-point gap within the same metro area.
Despite statewide improvement, Waterloo (33.5%) and Davenport (33.2%) still have one in three students chronically absent, more than double the state average.
Native American students in Iowa graduated at 68% in 2024, down from 79% in 2020, while the white-Native American gap widened to 23 points -- the largest racial gap in the state.
Iowa's chronic absenteeism rate has fallen from a 25.6% peak to 15.8%, but 183 of 325 districts remain above their pre-COVID baselines.
Storm Lake's 54% graduation rate is the lowest among Iowa's traditional school districts, reflecting the structural challenges facing a meatpacking town where most students are learning English.
Iowa's 88.3% graduation rate for the Class of 2024 exactly matches its pre-pandemic level, but the recovery masks a K-shaped split where Native American, Asian, and English learner students fell further behind.
Iowa lost 14,710 students in three years, exceeding the COVID crash. The 2026 loss of 7,670 doubled the prior year and 236 of 329 districts shrank.
