Iowa House Bill HF136

Iowa 2025-2026 Regular Session

• Introduced: 1/27/25
• Refer: 1/27/25

Caption

A bill for an act relating to the Iowa school performance profiles published by the department of education, including how dropout students affect school performance grades contained in the profiles.(See HF 393.)

Summary

House File 136 would amend Iowa law governing the Iowa school performance profiles used by the Department of Education to rate public schools. The bill keeps the existing framework for calculating school performance grades and classifications, including the use of achievement, growth, closing-gap, graduation, attendance, and college-readiness measures, along with other possible indicators such as post-graduation outcomes, discipline rates, student engagement, parent input, and staff working conditions. The bill’s main substantive change is narrow but important: if a student drops out, later returns to the school, and then drops out again, that second or later dropout would not count against the school’s performance grade. In effect, the measure is intended to prevent repeated dropout events by the same student from further lowering a school’s rating after the student has already been counted once in the dropout-related calculation.

Impact

The bill would modify the statutory rules used by the Department of Education when calculating school performance grades for attendance centers under Iowa’s school accountability system. It would not create a new program or funding stream, but it would change how dropout data is treated in the performance profile methodology, potentially affecting school rankings, classification into performance categories, and the support or recognition tied to those categories. Schools with students who re-enroll and later drop out again would see less negative impact on their performance grade from those subsequent dropout events.

Sentiment

The available legislative history suggests the bill was noncontroversial in committee, as reflected by a unanimous 23-0 House Education Committee report. There is no recorded committee transcript indicating significant debate, and the bill’s narrow scope suggests it was viewed as a technical adjustment to the accountability formula rather than a broad policy shift. However, the bill was later withdrawn, so it did not advance to final enactment in the form introduced.

Contention

The main point of potential contention is the fairness of excluding second or subsequent dropouts from school accountability calculations. Supporters would likely view the change as preventing schools from being penalized multiple times for the same student’s repeated disengagement, while critics could argue it weakens accountability by removing a negative outcome from the performance grade. The bill also sits within the broader debate over how much weight school report cards should give to dropout, graduation, and other non-test-based indicators when judging school quality.