News From The Heartland

Iowa has made public education news recently, for all the wrong reasons.

Governor Kim Reynolds and other state leaders are attempting to make the case for Iowa to receive block grants from the federal government, which gives the state flexibility in how to spend funds historically dispensed by the U.S. Department of Education.

According to the Des Moines Register, “Top state officials are making the case that Iowa’s recent improvements in school performance are reason the U.S. Department of Education should approve the state’s first-in-the-nation pitch for using nearly $157 million in federal education money as block grants.”

The state cited a so-called new ‘unified accountability system’ that Iowa DOE leaders say provides a more transparent measure of student outcomes, as well as an 11% improvement in third grade reading scores and ’exceptional gains’ in K-12 math skills, as described by Governor Kim Reynolds.

Iowa will probably receive the block grant from the Trump administration, but a closer look at Iowa K-12 data suggests the state isn’t doing as well as it thinks – especially when it comes to black, brown, and poor kids.

Whereas 73.56% of all students scored “proficient” in English Language Arts, 48.18% of African Americans, 59.66% of Hispanic, and 59.58% of low socio-economic status students earned that distinction.

In math, 70.93% of all students scored “proficient,” while 41.5% of African Americans, 55.18 of Hispanic, and 56.02 of poor kids earned that rating.

These are numbers Snow and Reynolds didn’t share in their recent press conferences.

Based upon these test results, who thinks Iowa deserves to receive $157 million from the feds with few strings attached? I don’t.

But Iowa is just one example. Sadly, there are many more states that mirror Iowa’s performance when it comes to failing to meet the needs of all kids. Should these states receive block grant funding, knowing full well that their K-12 leadership hasn’t focused on kids that need help the most, and probably won’t focus on those kids moving forward?

One must assume that if states, whether they are blue or red, wanted to solve their achievement gaps between high and low performers, they would have done it already.

Des Moines Public Schools just fired their superintendent – Ian Roberts. Roberts was hired to be Des Moines’ K-12 leader back in July of 2023. In May of 2024, unbeknownst to the Des Moines school board, Roberts was ordered by an immigration judge in Dallas to be removed from the U.S., based on numerous brushes with the law, including weapon and drug charges. On September 26^th Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested Roberts and soon thereafter the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners revoked his administrator license. On September 30^th Roberts submitted his resignation as Des Moines’ superintendent.

I was never a big Ian Roberts fan, although many were. He appeared to me to play the role of “a Harold Hill (the marching band charlatan made famous in “The Music Man”) of public education,” someone who made people feel good and thereby improved school district culture. But if you look at Des Moines’ black, brown, and poor student test scores, in English and math, one immediately notices a flat line for those groups’ performance. Now, to be fair, Roberts was only in the district for two years or so, but instead of racing kids on a middle school track or hosting panel discussions on a high school stage, it seems Roberts could have spent more time trying to figure out how to get the neediest kids in Des Moines smarter and stronger. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for building school district culture, especially for those kids and families historically under-served, but doesn’t academic excellence have to come first?

So Des Moines is looking for a new superintendent, and they have a $265 million school bond vote scheduled for November 4^th. With all the disruption caused by Ian Roberts’s resignation, it might be wise for the Des Moines school board to pull the bond from the ballot, wait until a new superintendent is hired, and then add the bond to an upcoming election ballot.

But Iowa law prevents ballot measures from being withdrawn once they have been approved by the county commissioner of elections, so the election must be held this November. The Roberts’ debacle couldn’t have happened at a worse time for Des Moines.

Til tomorrow. SVB