Original Research by School Decision on Garrison 51
Garrison Public School District serves the area around Garrison in McLean County, North Dakota, with two schools: Bob Callies Elementary School and Garrison High School. The district covers pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade, making it a full pre-K-to-12 system in a single small-town setting. The enrollment is small, with roughly two to three dozen students per grade level, which means classes are intimate and teachers know their students well. The community is predominantly white, with a meaningful American Indian and Alaska Native presence and smaller shares of multiracial, Hispanic, and Asian students. The district did not report free-or-reduced-price-lunch data, special education rates, or English learner figures, so those pieces of the student-support picture are missing here.
On state assessments, North Dakota introduced a new test called ND A-PLUS, with changes to both the assessment name and the proficiency cut scores. Because of those changes, prior-year comparisons are not reliable, and the data carries no trend information. What is available is a single year of proficiency results reported as ranges rather than exact point values, a format that often reflects small cohort sizes where privacy protections apply. In math, the ranges land in the moderate band across most grades, with a couple of grade levels reaching toward the higher end and a couple sitting lower. English language arts follows a similar pattern, with one early grade showing a lower range and another grade landing higher, while the middle grades hold steady in the middle. Science was tested in two grades, with the younger grade showing a stronger range and the older grade showing a weaker one. Participation was solid across most grades and subjects, with one grade dipping slightly lower in ELA. No average scale scores were reported. The overall academic picture is mixed but broadly in line with what small rural districts often show: some grades doing well, others with room to grow, and no single clear pattern running through every subject and year.
No graduation rate, course access, staffing, discipline, or attendance data was provided, so those dimensions of the high school experience cannot be characterized here. Program offerings were not reported either. A parent looking into the upper grades would want to ask the district directly about advanced coursework, career and technical education, and post-secondary preparation options, since none of that appears in the available data.
The housing market across the district's zip codes is modest by national standards and sits below the North Dakota state benchmark. The town of Garrison carries the bulk of the district's housing weight, with values in a middle range for the area. Coleharbor shows higher home values, while Max comes in lower. Appreciation has been steady recently, with the district's weighted value climbing at a healthy clip year over year, outpacing the state's rate of growth. The price-to-income ratio sits below the national level, suggesting that homeownership is relatively attainable for working families in this area compared with much of the country. Rental data was not available. The broader economic backdrop includes a thirty-year mortgage rate in the mid-six range and a national unemployment rate holding steady.
The district brief turned up no recent parent-relevant changes, such as bond issues, school closures, leadership transitions, or program launches. That absence could mean stability, or it could reflect limited public reporting for a district this size. Either way, families considering Garrison would be choosing a small, single-community district where the peer group is tight-knit and the academic results are average-ish for the region, with science a relative bright spot in the younger grade and a clear soft spot in the older tested grade. The housing is affordable, the setting is rural, and the scale is personal.
See more original research from School Decision →