The top reported proficiency rate is 0% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Spring Prairie Elementary
Spring Prairie Elementary serves kindergarten through sixth grade as part of the Hawley Public School District, located in the small town of Hawley, Minnesota, about a short drive east of Fargo-Moorhead along US Highway 10. The school sits on the edge of a community that has seen modest new residential development in recent years, with subdivisions like Autumn View Addition and Prairie Hills Estates attracting families. The town itself is primarily residential, surrounded by farmlands and pastures, and most residents own their homes. Hawley has a country club with a golf course, a downtown area along the highway, and the Buffalo River running through it. The school district operates separate buildings for elementary and secondary grades, and Spring Prairie is the K-6 building.
The school is very small, with an enrollment that reflects a rural elementary setting. The student body is overwhelmingly white. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating that a significant portion of families face economic challenges. Enrollment figures by grade show a few students in each grade level, creating a classroom environment where individual attention is possible simply because of the scale. The school is a regular public school and is not a charter or magnet school.
State testing data for Spring Prairie Elementary is largely absent for the 2024-25 school year. In math and English language arts, proficiency rates were reported at zero percent across grades three through six. For science, the fifth-grade results were suppressed because the number of students tested was too small to report publicly, though participation was complete. This pattern of suppressed or zero-reported results is common in very small schools, where the state withholds data to protect student privacy and where a single student's performance can dramatically shift percentages. A parent evaluating this school will not find meaningful test-score comparisons to other schools. The school’s overall proficiency index, when measured against other districts in Clay County, placed in the bottom quartile, though this index was calculated from those same low or missing figures.
There is no graduation rate for Spring Prairie because it serves only elementary grades. Similarly, the data does not include information on chronic absenteeism, discipline, course access, or staffing. The district brief turned up no recent parent-relevant changes, such as boundary adjustments or program launches, suggesting a period of stability for the district as a whole.
What a family considering Spring Prairie Elementary should understand is that this is a rural school where the small size shapes every aspect of the experience. The lack of standardized test data means that academic performance, as measured by the state, is essentially not available for public comparison. A parent may want to ask the school directly about how they assess student progress and what supports are in place for learners, especially given that a large share of students come from lower-income households. The school’s setting in a growing small town with new housing developments suggests that the community is attracting families, but the school itself has not generated the kind of public achievement data that families in larger districts can easily compare. For parents who value a tight-knit, small-scale elementary environment and are comfortable evaluating the school through direct conversation rather than published metrics, Spring Prairie offers that possibility within a district that separates elementary and secondary grades into two buildings in a single town.
See more original research from School Decision →