Scattergood Friends School educates students in grades nine through twelve. It is in Cedar County, Iowa, two miles (3 km) east and one half mile south of the town of West Branch. Founded in 1890 by Iowa Wilburite Quakers to provide a "guarded education" for their own children, it is owned and operated by Iowa Yearly Meeting of Friends (Conservative). In recent years about a third of students and staff have been Quakers, with the rest coming from many faiths.
Scattergood offers a college preparatory curriculum. It is accredited by the Iowa Department of Education and by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States (ISACS). In addition to academic achievement, the Scattergood program emphasizes community life, responsible world citizenship, and meaningful work shared by all.
Although there are a handful of day students each year, nearly all students stay in one of the 60 dormitory beds on campus. Likewise, most of the 25 faculty and staff live in on-campus apartments. Available housing limits the size of the school, resulting in small class sizes and a family atmosphere.
Teaching and learning at Scattergood take place in many settings beyond the classroom. The campus includes a pond/marsh, a prairie, and a farm with a variety of livestock and 3.5 acres (14,000 m²) of organic vegetable production.
Everyone at Scattergood participates in a work program, called the crew system. This includes everything from working on the farm to making breakfast for the school. There are no janitors at Scattergood; all cleaning on campus is done by students and staff. Work assignments rotate monthly.
Roughly a quarter of Scattergood students come from outside the United States. Former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who was overthrown as a result of popular protest, is a Scattergood graduate.