North Star Academy, Duluth MN - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on North Star Academy

A parent considering North Star Academy will find a K-8 charter school in Duluth that serves a sizable student body for its grade band. The school is part of the Duluth Public Schools Academy, an authorizer relationship typical of Minnesota’s charter sector. Because it stops at eighth grade, there is no high school graduation rate to report, and the school does not offer the advanced course sequences, career pathways, or diploma credentials that families with older students will need to seek elsewhere after eighth grade.

The student body is predominantly white, with a notable share of students identifying as two or more races and smaller shares of Black, Hispanic, and American Indian students. More than half of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a marker that the school serves a population with above-average economic need relative to area schools. The school’s Title I status was not provided, so it is unclear whether it receives federal funding to support low-income students. Data on students with disabilities and English learners was also missing from the available records.

State assessment results are available for math, English language arts, and science across grades three through eight. On the 2024-25 Minnesota state tests, the school’s overall proficiency rate across all tested subjects and grades landed below the midpoint when compared with other schools in St. Louis County. Looking grade by grade, the most favorable result was in third-grade math, where a solid majority of students met proficiency. In most other grades and subjects, the share of students reaching proficiency was far lower. Fifth-grade science was tested, and a little under a third of students were proficient, while eighth-grade science proficiency was in the teens. The pattern across the upper grades in math was especially soft: from grade five onward, proficiency rates were roughly one in five students or just above. In English language arts, the range across grades was narrower, hovering mostly in the high thirties to high forties, with only one grade falling below that band. Families should note that the assessments changed names and cut scores between testing cycles, so direct year-over-year trend comparisons are not available from the single year of data provided.

The school appears to sit within a single building, given its Technology Drive address, and no information was available on class sizes, teacher staffing ratios, or course access. Discipline data and chronic absenteeism rates were also absent from the record. For a charter school, families often want to understand the school’s specific instructional model or educational philosophy, but the data did not include a program description, so a parent may want to visit or contact the school directly to learn about its academic approach.

Duluth itself is a port city on Lake Superior, the regional center for northeastern Minnesota. Its economy mixes healthcare, shipping, tourism, and education, and it draws commuters from a wide surrounding area. The housing market in the school’s zip code shows home values and rents that are broadly in line with the state and national medians, and recent trends indicate both are rising at a moderate pace. The city’s population has been stable with slow growth, and the district brief turned up no major recent changes to the authorizing district that would be likely to affect the school. For a parent weighing this school, the central facts are a charter setting in a mid-sized city, a student body with significant economic diversity, and state test results that show a strong third-grade math cohort but a pattern of low proficiency across most other tested areas, particularly in middle-grade math and science.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 363%

School 63% · District 53% · ▲ 10 pts above district

▲ 8 pts above state median · ▲ 7 pts above county median

Grade 443%

School 43% · District 43%

▼ 8 pts below state median · ▼ 13 pts below county median

Grade 520%

School 20% · District 20%

▼ 16 pts below state median · ▼ 6 pts below county median

Grade 627%

School 27% · District 23% · ▲ 4 pts above district

even with state median · ▼ 1 pts below county median

Grade 720%

School 20% · District 20%

▼ 4 pts below state median · ▼ 3 pts below county median

Grade 820%

School 20% · District 20%

▼ 5 pts below state median · even with county median

English language arts

Grade 346%

School 46% · District 41% · ▲ 5 pts above district

▲ 4 pts above state median · even with county median

Grade 435%

School 35% · District 37% · ▼ 2 pts below district

▼ 6 pts below state median · ▼ 8 pts below county median

Grade 548%

School 48% · District 54% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▼ 6 pts below state median · ▼ 10 pts below county median

Grade 646%

School 46% · District 40% · ▲ 6 pts above district

even with state median · ▼ 4 pts below county median

Grade 740%

School 40% · District 40%

▲ 4 pts above state median · ▲ 1 pts above county median

Grade 841%

School 41% · District 41%

▲ 6 pts above state median · ▲ 11 pts above county median

Science

Grade 529%

School 29% · District 25% · ▲ 4 pts above district

▲ 5 pts above state median · ▲ 1 pts above county median

Grade 817%

School 17% · District 17%

▲ 5 pts above state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

This schoolDULUTH PUBLIC SCHOOLS ACADEMY, 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-income39%Higher-income52%13 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income35%Higher-income37%2 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income45%Higher-income51%6 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income39%Higher-income54%16 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income30%Higher-income50%20 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income19%Higher-income62%43 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income56%Higher-income69%13 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income30%Higher-income63%33 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income13%Higher-income27%14 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income19%Higher-income38%18 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income8%Higher-income33%25 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income10%Higher-income31%22 pp gap