The top reported proficiency rate is 65% in English language arts. The lowest is 22% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Great Oaks Academy Charter School
Great Oaks Academy Charter School is a tuition-free public charter school in Dakota County that serves students from kindergarten through seventh grade. It is a young school, having opened in the fall of 2020, and it offers a classical, liberal arts education built on the Trivium model, which divides learning into the Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric stages. The school currently operates as a single district with two campuses: Great Oaks Academy - Grammar, and GOA School of Logic. Its expansion plans are clear and active. In the fall of 2025, the school is opening a second campus in Eagan for grades six through nine on a newly remodeled property, and it intends to add one grade each year until it becomes a full kindergarten through twelfth grade school. This growth trajectory gives families in Farmington, Eagan, and the surrounding south metro area a clear path through high school without needing to switch schools.
The enrollment across the district is modest for a kindergarten through grade seven span, and the student body is predominantly white. There were no free-or-reduced-price lunch data available in the record, and data on students with individualized education programs and English learners were also missing, so a full picture of the school's economic and special-education composition is not possible from this source.
On state assessments, the school's overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades places it in the top quartile among Dakota County's districts, a strong showing for a relatively new school. In math, proficiency rates across individual grades were consistently above half in most grades, with a notable dip in the eighth grade and a clear strength in the third and seventh grades. In English language arts, the school performed well across nearly every grade level, with all but one grade reporting a proficiency rate of at least half. Science results, which come from a test that underwent both a name change and a cut-score change in the assessment year, were lower, particularly in eighth grade. A parent may want to look into this further with the school to understand how the science curriculum aligns with the new assessment.
Chronic absenteeism, which tracks students who miss a substantial share of school days, was at a rate that was above the midpoint among Dakota County's districts, meaning it was lower than half of the comparison group and better than the county median. This is a positive sign for student engagement and daily attendance in a young charter school.
Per-pupil current spending was in the lower range among Dakota County's districts. That is a plain financial context; it does not by itself signal quality, but it is a fact a parent may wish to discuss with the school regarding class sizes and resource allocation. Because the school does not yet serve high school grades, there is no four-year graduation rate to report.
There is no locale brief available in the data, so the specific community context was not provided. What is clear from the district's own reporting is that Great Oaks Academy is a school in its early years with an ambitious expansion plan, a classical curriculum that draws families looking for a structured, liberal-arts approach, and academic results that, on the whole, measure well against other districts in Dakota County. The school's identity is still being built as it grows, and the coming years will fill in details that are not yet available, such as high school outcomes and deeper demographic data.
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