Lismore Colony Elementary, Clinton MN

Original Research by School Decision on Lismore Colony Elementary

Lismore Colony Elementary is a school where the story is told almost entirely by its setting and composition, because the standard academic measures that families typically weigh have been suppressed or are absent. For a parent considering this school, the first and most important point is that this is a very small, rural, K-through-8 regular public school serving a single, tightly-knit community of families.

The school is located in a small agricultural town in western Minnesota. The town’s character is quiet and rooted in agriculture, with a compact Main Street, a history museum in the former train station, and a community center. The surrounding area is rural, and the town itself covers a small geographic footprint. The population has seen a modest decline in recent years, and the primary employers in the area are the school district, the city government, and local businesses, with the surrounding area dominated by farming. The school is embedded in this setting, not on a separate campus.

Enrollment at Lismore Colony Elementary is small, with students in every grade from kindergarten through eighth grade. The student body is entirely white. All of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a marker that the school serves a population with high economic need. Data on students with disabilities and English learners were not available.

The academic picture from state testing is limited. For the most recent year, proficiency rates for math and English language arts were reported at the school level. However, all individual grade-level results for math and English language arts from third through eighth grade were reported at a zero percent proficiency rate. For science, the results for fifth and eighth grade were suppressed because the number of students tested was very small, which is common when enrollment is tiny. The school’s overall proficiency index, which averages results across tested subjects and grades, places it in the bottom quartile relative to the other districts in Big Stone County. Because the school has only one year of data for this metric, there is no trend to examine. A parent should be aware that with a very small student group, a single year’s results can be heavily influenced by a few students, and the suppressed data for science means that result simply cannot be known from this source. The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report.

This is a school that serves a distinct community, most likely a Hutterite colony, which is a close-knit, rural, religious community. The student composition and the economic context reflect that. The small size means that every student is known. The academic pathway is not one defined by broad course offerings, AP classes, or career pathways, because those are not relevant for elementary and middle school grades in a school of this size. For a family that is part of the colony community, this school is its neighborhood school. For a family outside that community, this school would be a mismatch, as it is not a general-attendance public school drawing from a mixed residential area. The data available is thin, but that thinness itself is informative: it confirms a very small, homogeneous, and economically challenged student body, and state testing results that are far below state and county averages, with important gaps in the record. A parent would want to discuss actual student progress and daily instruction directly with the school.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 30%

School 0% · District 60% · ▼ 60 pts below district

▼ 55 pts below state median

Grade 40%

School 0% · District 48% · ▼ 48 pts below district

▼ 51 pts below state median

Grade 50%

School 0% · District 52% · ▼ 51 pts below district

▼ 35 pts below state median

Grade 60%

School 0% · District 24% · ▼ 24 pts below district

▼ 27 pts below state median

Grade 70%

School 0% · District 25% · ▼ 25 pts below district

▼ 24 pts below state median

Grade 80%

School 0% · District 33% · ▼ 33 pts below district

▼ 26 pts below state median

English language arts

Grade 30%

School 0% · District 67% · ▼ 67 pts below district

▼ 42 pts below state median

Grade 40%

School 0% · District 38% · ▼ 38 pts below district

▼ 41 pts below state median

Grade 50%

School 0% · District 70% · ▼ 70 pts below district

▼ 54 pts below state median

Grade 60%

School 0% · District 36% · ▼ 36 pts below district

▼ 46 pts below state median

Grade 70%

School 0% · District 50% · ▼ 50 pts below district

▼ 36 pts below state median

Grade 80%

School 0% · District 67% · ▼ 67 pts below district

▼ 36 pts below state median

This schoolCLINTON-GRACEVILLE-BEARDSLEY, 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.