Does Your Kid Go To One Of The 30 Best High Schools In Iowa?

Depending on where you live in Iowa depends on where you're sending your kid to high school. If you live in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, or the Iowa side of the Quad Cities, you have more choices than others in small towns or cities with just one option.

But you want your kids to have the best education they can to prepare them for college and the real world. Not every high school in Iowa is currently earning an A+ grade but there are plenty of schools that are, including quite a few right here in Eastern Iowa.

Finding The Best High Schools in Iowa

The website Stacker compiled this list of the 30 best high schools in Iowa. To do so, they used the 2023 rankings from Niche which uses seven weighted factors for its rankings.

A school's score is based primarily on academics, but other factors influence the score. At the bottom of this list at number 30 is Grinnell Community Senior High School. Now, that's not a bad thing because their grade is an A-. To be on this list at all is a great thing.

Bettendorf High School Made The List

Not one, but two Quad Cities high schools made the top 30 list.

With enrollment at 1,550 (2023 numbers, mind you) the student to teacher ratio is 16:1. With other factors to consider, Niche gave BHS an A- grade.

Pleasant Valley Is Doing Awesome

The best Iowa public high school in the Quad Cities is none other than Pleasant Valley High School.

Slacker put PV at #2 because with an enrollment number of 1,643 (in 2023), the student to teacher ratio is 18:1. The other factors considered bumped it up to number two and an A+ grade.