The Iowa Department of Education today announced a graduation rate of 87-point-5 percent for Iowa’s class of 2023.
Lower than graduation rates reported in previous years, the 2023 rate was calculated using a newly corrected code after the department identified an error in the legacy calculation code that had been used for at least 10 years to determine the state’s four and five year graduation rates.
The department’s Information and Analysis Services team discovered that mobile students who transferred between districts and later dropped out had been inadvertently removed from the student cohort rather than included as non-graduates. As a result, graduation rates for the previous 10 years were calculated and reported at a higher than actual rate.
Education leaders were informed about the error, which has now been corrected.
Corrected four-year graduation rates for the graduating classes of 2021 and 2022 dropped slightly from what were originally reported
