The Iowa Conservatory (ICON), a high school in Iowa City that specializes in performing and visual arts, has become the state's first accredited private performing arts school. Last month, it earned regional accreditation from Cognia, a global nonprofit that accredits and supports more than 40,000 educational institutions worldwide.
Founded in 2023, ICON offers specialized training for students pursuing careers in music, theater, dance, visual arts, design and production. The accreditation will allow ICON to accept international students and offer "in-house" instruction, independent from the online program partnership it was relying on before.
“Accreditation turned our school into a true school," said ICON's founder, Leslie Nolte. "Before this, we were not able to offer diplomas or transcripts with our course catalog to postsecondary universities, conservatories, so we knew getting accreditation would put us on the map to be a 'real school,' for lack of a better description.”
The designation means ICON also becomes one of more than 200 accredited nonpublic schools recognized by the state of Iowa, meaning it can begin accepting students with education savings accounts (ESAs). The accounts make state tax dollars available to pay for private school tuition.
"What we were able to do because of the accreditation, and therefore the ESA, is to offer academics in-person, but also afford academics in-person.”Leslie Nolte, ICON founder
According to data from the Iowa Department of Education, private school enrollment in Iowa has risen while public school numbers have slightly declined since the start of the state's ESA program in 2023. A report from the Common Sense Institute, a conservative-leaning public policy organization, estimates that as many as 5,600 students have switched from public to private schools since the program began.
Nolte said working to accept ESAs wasn’t her original plan, but the school made the decision in order to make ICON affordable for more students, as well as to meet its own financial needs in shifting to independent, in-person instruction.
“We opened this school with no intention of taking the ESA. We really wanted to stay partnered with our local school district," Nolte said. "Over the last two and a half years, through accreditation and the partnership, we discovered that the academics online were not the best thing for our students, and so that really changed in the last six months. What we were able to do because of the accreditation, and therefore the ESA, is to offer academics in-person, but also afford academics in-person.”
Tuition for ICON's standard, full-day program is $25,000 a year, and $35,000 for international students.
Nolte said she opened the school to provide high school-aged students access to a robust — and competitive — arts education in Iowa.
"I've seen so many student artists of a high school age group have to leave the state of Iowa, in their opinion, in order to compete at the next level," she said. "We hope to really make a name for ourselves, so that when students apply to jobs or college after high school, we start becoming the name on their application, especially in the conservatory world, that's really sought after.”
ICON currently has 14 students, but Nolte says she's talking to just under 80 families for next school year.
"I think the accreditation is absolutely the reason why we are now getting looked at on a more serious level," she said.
ICON is currently accepting applications for the upcoming fall semester.
