Articles Tagged: Iowa Board of Education

How career and technical education for students across the state is implemented could see drastic changes in the coming years after the Iowa State Board of Education voted to shift millions in funding for these programs away from community colleges and to K-12 school districts.

Iowa’s 15 community colleges in 2024 made year-over-year enrollment gains in 2024 thanks largely to record joint enrollment by high school students wanting to earn community college credit at no cost to them or their families.

Following vocal criticism of an initial revision to Iowa’s science education standards that stripped away phrases like “climate change” and “biological evolution” from what students should learn throughout their K-12 education, a second draft has returned references to those terms.

Public comments are being gathered and a public hearing on the proposed rules is scheduled for December in Des Moines.

Overall, fewer students enrolled in credit-earning courses across Iowa’s 15 community colleges in the full 2023 academic year – even as more students than ever before jointly enrolled in one or more courses while still in high school.

Everyone agrees on 'why.’ It’s ‘how’ that gets tricky

State officials advanced proposed rules seeking to clarify restrictions under a new state law that require the removal of any books or curriculum that describe sex acts or instruction related to gender identity and sexual orientation.

This year’s Iowa Ideas conference will also touch on that growing impetus to “meet the needs of students” with a session asking what those needs are – including in the mental health realm.

Library restrictions in an Iowa law passed this year are causing headaches for school librarians and administrators as they prepare for the new school year, and many have said they want to see more guidance from the state to clear up uncertainties. But one Republican lawmaker who supported the bill said, “It could not be more clear.”

Iowa Department of Education officials left vague their plans to give school administrators more guidance on a state law that bans books with sexual content from school libraries during a state Board of Education meeting Thursday. The board’s president said school officials are looking to the department for guidance in implementing the law.

To make up for missed deadlines and late data from the state, Iowa Auditor Rob Sand this week had his office for the first time push out “single audit reports” for each of Iowa’s public universities to spare them from threats to federal funding and certifications that require annual financial reporting.

For the first time in more than a decade, Iowa’s 15 community colleges in the last full academic year saw a collective bump in credit-seeking students — although the total number of hours they took continued to fall, sustaining a trend of students taking lighter course loads.

Given its long history training educators, University of Northern Iowa — called the Iowa State Teachers College from 1909 to 1961 — is working to address the shortage, including through a new “fully online teacher preparation program” that allows working paraeducators with associate degrees to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education, with a special education minor.

Once again, fewer students enrolled in Iowa’s 15 community colleges this fall — continuing a decadelong slide that COVID exacerbated, driving a 7.5 percent drop from fall 2019 to fall 2021.