Original Research by School Decision on Beulah 27
Beulah Public School District covers a small community in Mercer County, North Dakota, centered on the town of Beulah with coverage extending toward Glen Ullin. The district operates three schools: Beulah Elementary, Beulah Middle, and Beulah High, serving students from kindergarten through twelfth grade. It is a compact, single-town district where families can expect their children to stay within one system from start to finish.
The student body is predominantly white, with small representation from Hispanic, American Indian or Alaska Native, and multiracial students, plus a handful of Black and Asian students. The district's enrollment is modest and spread fairly evenly across grade levels, with no single grade dominating. We looked for free-or-reduced-price lunch counts, individualized education program rates, and English learner data, but none were available in the provided materials, so we cannot speak to the district's poverty concentration or special-population servicing from this data. A parent wanting that picture would need to ask the district directly.
On state assessments, Beulah uses North Dakota's A-PLUS test, and the current year's results come with an important caveat. The state changed both the assessment name and the proficiency cut scores this year, which means trend comparisons against prior years are not reliable and have been flagged as not comparable. What the current results show is a mixed academic picture. In math, proficiency sits in a moderate band across most grades, with seventh grade standing out as the district's strongest showing and fifth grade landing lowest. Third, sixth, and eighth grades cluster in the same middle range. The pattern in English language arts is similar but somewhat softer overall. Seventh grade again is the bright spot, while third and eighth grades sit at the lower end of the reported range. Science was tested only in fourth and eighth grades, and both landed in that same moderate band. Participation was strong across every grade and subject, which means these results reflect nearly the full student body rather than a sliver of test-takers. The grade-to-grade variation, with seventh grade consistently outperforming the endpoints, is something a parent might want to look into further with the school, particularly to understand what happens between middle school and the transition years on either side.
No graduation rate data was provided for the district. We also found no course access information, no staffing figures, no attendance or discipline data, and no civil-rights reporting in the materials we received. Program offerings such as Advanced Placement, dual credit, or career and technical education were not listed, so we cannot characterize the upper-grade academic pathway from this data. Families considering Beulah High would benefit from asking the district directly about what college-preparatory and vocational options are available.
The housing market in the district is relatively affordable compared with both state and national benchmarks. Home values in the Beulah area run well below the North Dakota statewide figure and substantially below the national median, and the price-to-income ratio sits at a level that suggests a working family can manage a mortgage on local wages. Values have been rising modestly year over year. The Glen Ullin zip code within the district shows lower home values than Beulah proper, reflecting the difference between the larger town and the smaller community on the district's edge. Rent data was not available.
We searched for recent parent-relevant district changes, including referendums, curriculum shifts, or property-tax developments, and found nothing substantial reported. The district appears to be operating in a period of stability without major structural changes in the recent past.
What the available data paints is a small, stable, predominantly white district in affordable coal-country North Dakota, with state test results that are middling and uneven across grades, sitting under a new assessment framework that makes year-over-year comparison impossible for now. The academic strengths appear concentrated in the middle grades, with softer spots at the upper elementary and middle school transition points. The missing pieces here are substantial: no graduation rate, no poverty indicator, no special-population data, no course catalog, no discipline or attendance information. A family considering Beulah would get a useful but incomplete picture from public data alone and should go directly to the district to fill in the gaps, especially around high school programming and support services.
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