Public schools in Iowa

Iowa, 2024–25

497.1 thousand

Pupils

497,102

1.0% of the nation's public school pupils.

1,318

Public schools

Operational public schools in NCES’s 2024–25 directory.

14.2

Pupils per teacher

Over the 1,300 schools that report both counts; nationally 15.2.

7

Charter schools

0.2% of pupils.

$13,789

Spending per pupil

Current spending over fall membership, fiscal year 2023.

Iowa over time

Where Iowa’s districts got their money, fiscal year 2023

Revenue of all 338 districts in NCES’s finance file, by source. Nationally, 12.6% came from federal sources.

The largest districts in Iowa

By fall membership in 2024–25. Spending per pupil is the same district’s fiscal year 2023 figure from NCES’s finance file, where it reports one.

City, suburb, town and rural schools in Iowa

Colleges in Iowa that take federal student aid

75 colleges in Iowa are in NCES’s IPEDS universe for 2025–26: 19 public, 35 private nonprofit and 21 private for-profit. They enrolled 262,497 students over twelve months and awarded 21,661 bachelor’s degrees.

Iowa elsewhere on the Factbook

• Reported crimeCrime and justice

  Offenses reported to police by type, the trend, and the reporting coverage.

• Most dangerous cities in IowaCrime and justice

  What each agency serving 25,000 or more reported, ranked. Agency populations overlap, so these do not add up to the state.

• Prison populationCrime and justice

  People held under the state’s correctional authority, and the imprisonment rate. A different publisher counting a different thing.

• Arrests by race, sex and ageCrime and justice

  Arrests as the FBI’s participating agencies reported them, with what the figures can and cannot support at the top.

• Hate crimeCrime and justice

  Incidents reported to the FBI by bias motivation, as counts — the collection publishes no participation share, so there is no rate to compare states on.

• Federal obligationsFederal spending

  What federal agencies obligated against a place of performance in the state, per resident and by agency.

• Registered nonprofitsNonprofits

  How many organizations the IRS lists in the state, what they report as revenue, and which kinds of work they do.

• Payments to doctorsHealth

  What drug and device companies reported paying doctors with a practice address in the state, and the largest recipients.

• Farm program paymentsFarm subsidies

  What the Farm Service Agency paid through the state’s county offices, by program and by recipient. The offices that administered the payments, not a count of farms: a recipient addressed elsewhere is counted where they were paid.

• Paycheck Protection Program loansPPP loans

  The PPP loans SBA guaranteed to businesses operating in the state, by county, with how many carry a forgiveness amount and how many were charged off. Loans, not businesses: a business with two draws is two loans.

• The Iowa Factbook entryAcross the Factbook

  Every measure the Factbook publishes for this state in one place, each with where it ranks among the others and the record it came from.

The immigration hub has no page for this state: EOIR runs no immigration court here, and CBP publishes by sector and field office, which are its own areas of responsibility rather than a geography. Immigration and the border.