The top reported proficiency rate is 44% in Math. The lowest is 17% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Northside Elementary
Northside Elementary is a regular public school in Benson, Minnesota, serving students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade as part of the Benson Public School District. For families considering early elementary education in this part of rural western Minnesota, the school offers a full PK-5 pathway within a single building.
Benson itself is a small town that functions as the county seat of Swift County, with an economy tied to agriculture and the Chippewa Valley Ethanol Company. The population has been slowly declining in recent years, and the housing market is modest compared to state and national benchmarks. The town has a traditional small-town grid, with a downtown corridor on Pacific Avenue and civic anchors including a public library, a history museum, and a community aquatic center. Schools sit on separate campuses away from the downtown core.
The Benson district has made notable facility investments in recent years, constructing a performing arts center, adding collaborative learning spaces, building a multipurpose activity space, and creating a dedicated Pre-K-5 learning space that directly serves Northside Elementary students. The district also offers a free kindergarten readiness preschool program and introduces STEM coursework in early elementary grades, which gives the school a structured early-learning entry point for local families.
The student body is predominantly white, with a visible Hispanic population and smaller shares of Asian students and students of two or more races. About half of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, placing the school in a moderate socioeconomic context for the area. The school has no reported data on students with individualized education programs or English learners, so a parent wanting to understand how special education or language support works here would need to ask the school directly.
State testing results from the most recent school year show a mixed picture that varies notably by grade and subject. In third grade, math proficiency was solid, with a majority of students meeting standards, and reading proficiency was around the halfway mark. By fourth grade, however, proficiency dropped off sharply in both math and reading, with fewer than a quarter of students scoring proficient in reading. Fifth grade saw some recovery in reading, with nearly half proficient, but math proficiency remained under a third, and science proficiency was modest. This pattern of performance changing from grade to grade suggests that student achievement is not uniform, and a parent may want to ask the school how instruction and support differ across grade levels. Only one year of test data is available, so there is no way yet to see whether these numbers represent a trend or an isolated year.
Compared to other districts in Swift County, Northside’s overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades sits above the middle. The county contains only two school districts, so the comparison is narrow, but it places the school on the stronger side of local peers.
The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate, and no data on chronic absenteeism or discipline was available. These gaps are typical for an elementary school that does not yet report such metrics, but they leave a parent without a full picture of school climate.
For a family living in or moving to Benson, Northside Elementary offers a recently updated learning environment, an early childhood program, and a small-town setting. The academic results are uneven, with some grades performing well and others showing room for improvement, and the lack of multi-year data means it is too early to say whether the school is on an upward or downward trajectory.
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