Overview

East High School, founded in 1861, is the oldest high school in the Des Moines metro area and part of Des Moines Public Schools, one of five secondary schools in the district. It's currently the seventh-largest high school in Iowa by enrollment.

Enrollment is reported slightly differently between the NCES directory (2,014 for 2023-24) and Wikipedia's school-sourced figure (1,968 for 2024-25) -- close enough to reflect normal year-over-year change rather than a real discrepancy, but shown as a range rather than a single precise number.

Academics

No independently verified Iowa state assessment data (via Iowa School Performance Profiles) was located for this profile; check the Iowa Department of Education's site directly for current school-level results.

Neighborhood

The school is located on Des Moines's east side, in Polk County.

Crime & safety

Des Moines shows a now-familiar pattern in this directory: broad directional agreement (crime is elevated relative to the rest of Iowa specifically) alongside sharp disagreement on magnitude relative to national norms. Multiple sources describe Des Moines as below the national average overall (14% below, per one FBI-UCR-based source) with a C+ safety grade near the 47-49th percentile; another source describes it as "one of the most dangerous cities in the United States" with a violent crime rate framed as alarming; a third puts total crime at roughly 72% above both the Iowa and national per-capita averages. All sources agree Des Moines has a notably high motor-vehicle-theft rate specifically, and that safety varies significantly across the city's 52+ tracked neighborhoods.

"14% below the national average" and "one of the most dangerous cities in the United States" describe the same city, the same general period. The gap likely comes down to which comparison population and crime-weighting method each source uses -- but from a parent's perspective, that's exactly the kind of detail that gets lost when only one figure gets cited. We're showing the range rather than picking one.

Our calculated rating

We don't publish a single proprietary score, and Des Moines's safety-data spread is wide enough that we're not showing a rating for this profile. See our ratings methodology.

Sources

  1. Wikipedia, "East High School (Des Moines, Iowa)," cross-checked against NCES ID 190897000528.
  2. NCES Common Core of Data, School Search -- East High School, 2023-24 school year.
  3. Nextdoor Neighbors resource page, Des Moines crime and safety, 2026.
  4. CrimeGrade.org, Des Moines violent-crime and overall-crime analyses, 2025.
  5. AreaVibes, Des Moines crime data, citing FBI UCR data, 2026.
  6. NeighborhoodScout, Des Moines crime data, 2026.
  7. Movoto.com, "Des Moines Crime Rate: What Homebuyers Need to Know," citing local police reports.
  8. DoorProfit.com, Des Moines crime statistics, citing FBI UCR data, 2026.