Kingsland Elementary School, Spring Valley MN

Original Research by School Decision on Kingsland Elementary School

Kingsland Elementary School serves the youngest students of the Kingsland Public School District, covering pre-kindergarten through sixth grade in the small town of Spring Valley, Minnesota. The school sits in a community where agriculture is the economic mainstay—corn, soybeans, dairy, beef, and hog farms surround the area, and farm implement businesses and trucking remain strong locally. Many residents commute north to Rochester or west to Austin for work, while the town itself keeps a relaxed, small-town character with a compact downtown along Broadway that hosts community events through the year. The population has seen a modest decline in recent years, and the local economic development association offers housing incentives on new residential projects to encourage growth; median home values in the area run moderately below state and national benchmarks.

The school itself is a regular public school with an enrollment that is small for its grade band. It draws a student body that is predominantly white. More than two in five students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the rural and agricultural economic base of the area. Data on special education and English learner enrollment were not available in the state sources used here, a gap that a parent may want to follow up on with the school directly.

Academically, Kingsland Elementary performs noticeably above the county average in overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades. When compared with other districts in Fillmore County, the school places in the top quartile on this composite measure. The Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments from the 2024-25 school year show a pattern of relative strength in mathematics across all tested grades, with proficiency rates that are solidly above half. Reading and language arts results are more mixed: performance in the early tested grades is lower, while by fifth and sixth grade the share of students meeting state standards rises. Science testing takes place only at grade five, and that year's proficiency was much lower than in the other subjects—a parent may want to look into this further with the school, as the science assessment changed format and cut scores in that year, which may affect comparability. Only a single year of assessment data was available, so no trend direction can be reported.

Because the school ends at sixth grade, there is no high school graduation rate to report, and data on chronic absenteeism and discipline were not present in the available records. Information on course access, staffing ratios, and attendance also was missing. The district brief turned up no recent changes affecting parents that met the bar for lasting impact, so no district-level developments are noted here.

For a family considering this school, the picture is one of a small, community-rooted elementary school in a farming town with a modest housing market and a steady if slightly declining population. Proficiency in math is a clear relative strength, while reading and writing results improve across the grade span. The science dip is something to inquire about. The school serves as the foundational building for a public school system that continues into higher grades elsewhere in the district, and its placement among county peers suggests academic performance that is above the midpoint for the region.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 365%

School 65% · District 65%

▲ 10 pts above state median

Grade 462%

School 62% · District 62%

▲ 11 pts above state median

Grade 555%

School 55% · District 55%

▲ 20 pts above state median

Grade 658%

School 58% · District 58%

▲ 31 pts above state median

English language arts

Grade 341%

School 41% · District 41%

▼ 1 pts below state median

Grade 452%

School 52% · District 52%

▲ 11 pts above state median

Grade 561%

School 61% · District 61%

▲ 7 pts above state median

Grade 661%

School 61% · District 61%

▲ 15 pts above state median

Science

Grade 516%

School 16% · District 16%

▼ 9 pts below state median

This schoolKINGSLAND PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income24%Higher-income52%29 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income43%Higher-income62%19 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income40%Higher-income68%28 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income53%Higher-income69%16 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income50%Higher-income76%26 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income38%Higher-income86%48 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income50%Higher-income57%7 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income47%Higher-income69%22 pp gap