Southeast Polk High School
Pleasant Hill · IA · Southeast Polk Comm School District · Public
📄 Shareable scorecard →Similar nearby schools
Most similar nearby schools
One School Global Des Moines Campus → Grand View Christian School → Carlisle High School → Joshua Christian Academy → Bondurant-Farrar High School → East High School → Great Oaks High School and Career Center → North High School →📋 At a glance
- 📚 14 AP courses offered — Elite
- ✅ Dual-enrollment program (college credit while in HS)
- ✅ Gifted & talented program
- 🔢 2 calculus classes · 27 physics · 25 chemistry
- 🎓 AP rigor: 90th percentile nationally
- 📝 SAT/ACT participation: 62th percentile by test-taker volume
- 🎓 4-yr grad rate: 93% (67th percentile nationally)
Composed from federal CRDC offerings, EDFacts ACGR, and other public data. Full breakdowns below.
How Southeast Polk High School compares for families
Standout academic depth by national standards.
- ▸ StatewideAP rigor in the top 10% nationally with 14 AP courses.
- ▸ LocallyIA students outperform the US average on NAEP 8th-grade math (+8 points).
- ▸ vs Similar SchoolsThe closest comparables nearby: One School Global Des Moines Campus, Grand View Christian School, Carlisle High School and 5 more. See the sidebar to compare side-by-side.
For Parents
Follow Southeast Polk High School
Get an email when Southeast Polk High School's numbers change — new admissions results, enrollment shifts, test scores. A few updates a year, no spam.
🎓 Academic rigor
AP + advanced-course offerings
Elite — exceptional AP + advanced course breadth
90th percentile nationally
✅ Gifted/talented program
Source: federal Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC 2020-21). CRDC reports what's offered + enrolled — it doesn't collect AP exam pass rates (College Board owns that data and doesn't release it school-level).
SAT / ACT participation
CRDC federal data · 2020-2162th percentile by test-taker volume
Source: federal Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC 2020-21). Volume — not score — is what's reported here. A higher count means more students at this school are entering the college admissions pipeline. Note: 2020-21 was COVID-disrupted; some districts (especially those that stayed remote longer) report unusually low or zero takers.
🎓 4-year graduation rate · federal EDFacts
What % of students graduate on time?
67th percentile nationally
Source: federal EDFacts ACGR (Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate), 2019 vintage via Urban Institute. EDFacts publishes a range (low-high) to preserve privacy on small cohorts; we display the midpoint.
👩🏫 Teacher workforce · federal CRDC
Teacher experience & reliability
Source: federal Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC 2017-18 — the most recent vintage that publishes per-school teacher quality fields; the 2020-21 sweep had them suppressed). "Inexperienced" = teachers in their first or second year. "Chronic absence" = teachers absent 10+ days/year.
🏛️ Federal Title I context
Mixed-income school
Below Title I eligibility threshold (FRPL < 35%)
25-34% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch. Below the federal Title I threshold but a meaningful share of the population is income-eligible for free lunch.
Source: NCES Common Core of Data, free/reduced-price lunch eligibility. The actual Title I designation is a district decision and may differ from eligibility — but the federal eligibility math is what we show here. We don't claim to assert whether the district formally chose to enroll this school in Title I.
Chronic absenteeism
Why this matters to enrollment: Chronic absence is the most reliable early indicator that a student will leave a school — either by transferring out, dropping out, or matriculating to a charter or private alternative. At this level, today's absentees become next year's enrollment loss and the year-after's revenue loss. For school leaders: an Enrollment Trend Audit traces this dynamic forward →
Source: U.S. Department of Education, Civil Rights Data Collection 2020–2021. Rate = students chronically absent ÷ 2024 total enrollment.
Counselor capacity
Source: U.S. Department of Education, Civil Rights Data Collection 2020-2021. Counselor ratio = the school's most recent total enrollment ÷ counselor FTE. The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends a 250:1 maximum; the US national median across schools with on-staff counselors is roughly 430:1.
Enrollment trend & projection
Total enrollment + grade 12, NCES Common Core of Data (2021–2024).
If the recent trend holds…
At its recent rate of -8.9%/year, projecting from 2024's 1,722 students:
≈ 642 fewer students by 2029 — a real revenue/relevance risk worth getting ahead of.
An extrapolation of the recent trajectory, not a forecast of the school's plans; ignores one-off shocks.
Revenue at risk
At $15,178 per student in district revenue, the 642 students projected to be lost by 2029 represent ≈ $9,744,276/year in funding at risk.
District total revenue ÷ enrollment, NCES F-33. Public funding largely follows enrollment, so a shrinking class is a recurring budget hit.
Nearby high schools — the local competition
The closest high schools families here also consider, and where their enrollment is heading.
| School | Type | Miles | HS enrollment | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| One School Global Des Moines Campus Des Moines |
Private | 6.4 | 36 | — |
| Grand View Christian School Des Moines |
Private | 6.7 | 643 | — |
| Carlisle High School Carlisle |
Public | 7.3 | 754 | +5.8% |
| Joshua Christian Academy Des Moines |
Private | 7.4 | 175 | +42.3% |
| Bondurant-Farrar High School Bondurant |
Public | 7.9 | 849 | +17.8% |
| East High School Des Moines |
Public | 8.0 | 1,952 | -6.1% |
| Great Oaks High School and Career Center Des Moines |
Public · charter | 9.2 | 72 | — |
| North High School Des Moines |
Public | 9.2 | 1,428 | -0.3% |