Original Research by School Decision on Twin Buttes 37
Twin Buttes 37 is a single-school public school district in rural North Dakota, serving kindergarten through eighth grade. The district operates just one building, Twin Buttes Elementary School, and the total enrollment is small even for a rural Prairie district. Class sizes at each grade are intimate, with only a handful of students per grade. The student body is predominantly American Indian or Alaska Native, with smaller shares of Hispanic, white, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander students. This is a district that reflects a specific tribal and rural community rather than a broader cross-section of the region.
State assessment results from the most recent reported year, which dates back several cycles, place proficiency in a low band for both math and English language arts. Math proficiency fell in the lowest reported range, and ELA proficiency was also in a low band, though slightly above math. Participation was solid, with most eligible students tested. These results are dated, and the assessment itself underwent changes around that period, so direct trend comparisons are not reliable. A parent reading these results should treat them as a snapshot from an older testing cycle rather than a current verdict. Asking the school for more recent performance data would be a reasonable next step.
Because the district ends at eighth grade, there is no graduation rate to report. Students presumably transition to a nearby high school or another district for ninth grade and beyond, though the data does not specify which one. Families considering Twin Buttes will want to ask where students go next and how the transition is handled. Information on free or reduced-price lunch eligibility, special education rates, and English learner status was not available in the data we reviewed, so we cannot characterize those dimensions of need or support here. Course access data, staffing details, attendance patterns, and disciplinary records were also absent.
The district sits in Dunn County, with housing data tied to the Beulah area. Home values run below the North Dakota state benchmark and well below national levels, which may make the area relatively accessible for families looking to buy. Mortgage rates and broader economic indicators follow national trends. No rental data was available for the district's zip code. We looked for a locale brief describing the community, its economy, and its character, but none was available, so the community picture remains limited. Similarly, we searched for district-level changes such as referendums, curriculum updates, or facility investments and found nothing that cleared a lasting-impact threshold, so we left that out rather than guess.
No neighbor comparison data was provided, so we cannot position Twin Buttes against surrounding districts in Dunn County. Program offerings, extracurriculars, and any specialized academic pathways were not reported. For a district this small, the absence of listed programs likely reflects scale rather than omission. A school with only a few dozen students across nine grades has inherent limits on what it can offer in-house, and families may want to ask directly about partnerships, shared services, or cooperative arrangements with neighboring districts that expand what is available.
What the data does show is a small, community-rooted district serving a largely Native student population in a rural part of western North Dakota, with housing costs below state norms and assessment results that are dated and low. The picture is thin. A family considering this district should go to the school directly for current test scores, details on the high school transition, and information about support services, all of which the available data does not cover.
See more original research from School Decision →