NCES CCD 2024-25 17 schools IA

Best-Resourced Schools in Iowa City, IA

Compiled from official source data by .

17 public K-12 schools in Iowa City from NCES Common Core of Data: enrollment, grade span, demographics, and Civil Rights Data Collection statistics for every active campus.

PlainSchools home → About this data
17
Schools
8,645
Students
46.6/100
Avg Resource Index
12.7:1
Avg Student-Teacher Ratio

National city placement

Middle-of-corpus city profile

According to NCES CCD 2024-25, Iowa City has more public-school enrollment than 76% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Iowa City sits in the broad middle of the national city distribution rather than at a single obvious extreme. Its scale, average Resource Investment Index, and staffing position need to be read together: a middle placement on one measure does not cancel a stronger or weaker result on another. The percentile panel makes those dimensions explicit, and the school table shows where the city aggregate breaks into materially different campus profiles.

Combined-grade campuses shape the local portfolio

10 of Iowa City's 17 listed schools use NCES's combined or “other” grade-level classification. Citywide averages therefore blend campuses serving unusually broad or nonstandard grade spans with conventional elementary, middle, and high schools. Grade configuration is a first-order comparison here, not a minor label.

One district, but meaningful resource variation

Iowa City's schools share one district authority while their average Resource Investment Index ranks at the 76th percentile among listed cities. Shared governance removes one source of policy variation, but it does not erase campus differences by grade span or enrollment. The 35-point gap between Iccsd Pk-12 Online Learning Program and Iowa City High School measures the remaining local spread. Use the district-level picture for common budget context, then compare the school components to see whether staffing, counseling, gifted-program reporting, or attendance accounts for each campus's position.

City enrollment
Top 24%
School count
Top 19%
Resource Index average
76th percentile
Teacher staffing
82nd percentile

Iowa City High School accounts for 19.3% of all Iowa City public-school enrollment

That concentration means Iowa City-wide averages can mask substantial variation outside the largest entity. Grade level: High. The share measures enrollment concentration only; it does not establish how districts allocate programs, capital, or staff. Enrollment-weighted aggregates give this entity more weight than any smaller peer, while an unweighted entity average treats every record equally.

Source: NCES Common Core of Data

Iowa City school enrollment varies 9.6× across entities

Iowa City school enrollment ranges from 173 students (lowest) to 1,666 students (highest), a spread of 1,493 students. That relatively narrow ratio reflects an unusually homogeneous school portfolio for a city this size. Per-school staffing and program breadth can differ sharply at opposite ends of that enrollment range, so the city average should not be treated as a typical campus.

Source: NCES Common Core of Data

Iowa City operates one school district — a single-district system

Iowa City's listed schools share one district boundary, budget authority, and reporting chain. That makes citywide and districtwide governance easier to compare, but it does not make individual campuses uniform: grade configuration, staffing, programs, and student need can still vary materially within the same school district.

Source: NCES Common Core of Data

Iowa City student-teacher ratio is 12.7:1 — low (typically associated with smaller schools or per-school staffing investment that often correlates with stronger per-student supports)

student-teacher ratio is the simplest comparative metric but it does not capture the full picture: the ratio counts FTE classroom teachers against total enrollment, push-in specialists, English-language aides, special-education co-teachers, and counselors are not included in most reporting Lower values often correlate with smaller scale and population characteristics rather than higher resource budgets per se.

Source: NCES Common Core of Data, Public School Universe

# School Score
1. Iccsd Pk-12 Online Learning Program 66
2. Lincoln Elementary School 57
3. Mark Twain Elementary 57
4. Bohumil Shimek Elementary School 57
5. Horace Mann Elementary School 51
6. Ernest Horn Elementary School 50
7. Helen Lemme Elementary School 50
8. Robert Lucas Elementary School 48
9. Elizabeth Tate Alt. High School 48
10. Alexander Elementary 46
11. Grant Wood Elementary School 46
12. Longfellow Elementary School 44
13. Herbert Hoover Elementary School 39
14. Weber Elementary 39
15. West Senior High School 33
16. Iowa City High School 31
17. Southeast Junior High School 31

Most racially and ethnically mixed schools in Iowa City

Ranked by the Simpson student-body diversity index (0-100) from NCES race and ethnicity data, where higher means a more evenly mixed student body. It measures mix, not quality.

  1. 1 Elizabeth Tate Alt. High School 69.8/100
  2. 2 Alexander Elementary 69.3/100
  3. 3 West Senior High School 69.1/100
  4. 4 Mark Twain Elementary 69.0/100
  5. 5 Longfellow Elementary School 68.8/100

What do families ask about schools in Iowa City?

Which Iowa City school has the highest Resource Investment Index? ▼

Iccsd Pk-12 Online Learning Program has the highest Resource Investment Index among the Iowa City schools in this federal-data comparison at 66/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.

How many schools are in Iowa City, IA? ▼

Iowa City has 17 public schools with a total enrollment of 8,645 students. Average student-teacher ratio: 12.7:1.

Other Cities in Iowa

Des Moines
64 schools
Cedar Rapids
42 schools
Davenport
26 schools
Sioux City
22 schools
Dubuque
18 schools
Ankeny
17 schools

Side-by-side: Compare any two schools or districts in Iowa →

Data from NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) 2024-25 and Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) 2021-22. The Resource Investment Index uses reported student-teacher ratio, counselor access, gifted programs, and attendance; it is not an academic rating. Cities must include at least five schools to be listed. This public-data comparison is for informational purposes: verify current enrollment, attendance boundaries, and programs with the school district before acting. See the guide to understanding NCES data.