Legislator names, districts, photos, contact details and committee assignments come from Open States, which collects them from the Iowa Legislature. Bills, sponsors and roll-call votes come from LegiScan, which collects them from the official House and Senate journals.
A legislator’s voting record on this site shows votes on the education bills we track: the bills on the Iowa Department of Education’s bill tracker, plus bills in the education committees. Final-passage votes are shown first; every recorded vote is one click away.
We list the record as filed. Where we add our own read of what a bill means for public schools, it is labeled “Our read” and explained.
How we rate bills
We read the bill and place it on a five-step scale: harms, likely harms, mixed or unclear, likely helps, or helps public schools. Each rating says which version of the bill we read and when, gives a one-sentence summary, and lists two to four reasons you can check against the bill text.
How the report card counts votes
We count final-passage votes on the bills we’ve rated. A yes on a bill that helps public schools, or a no on one that harms them, counts as a vote with public schools; the reverse counts against. Votes on bills we rated mixed or unclear, missed votes, and amendment or procedural votes aren’t counted.
The overall read weighs clear-cut bills more than “likely” ones and lands on the same five steps. We only give one once a legislator has at least three counted votes.