The top reported proficiency rate is 40% in English language arts. The lowest is 8% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Lynd Elementary
Lynd Elementary is a small regular public school serving preschool through fifth grade, part of the Lynd Public School District. The school is situated in the town of Lynd, a small, primarily residential bedroom community in southwestern Minnesota where most residents commute to the nearby city of Marshall for work. Lynd is described as a growing community, with new housing developments and a golf course driving expansion. The town itself has minimal commercial activity; its civic anchors include a city hall, a community center, a historic hotel museum, and the bordering Camden State Park. The district brief turned up no parent-relevant changes of lasting impact to note.
The school's enrollment is small for its grade band, and a substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is predominantly white, with a sizable Hispanic population and a very small share of students identifying as two or more races. State testing data for the most recent school year is available for math and reading in grades three and four, and the results show a mixed picture. In third-grade math, more than half of students scored proficient, but in fourth-grade math, no students met the proficiency bar. In reading, proficiency was below half of students in both third and fourth grades. Science testing data is older and was suppressed for grade five, with the most recent available data from more than a decade ago showing a very low proficiency rate for the small number of eighth graders tested; that data is too old to characterize current performance.
Placed relative to districts in Lyon County, Lynd Elementary’s overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades falls below the midpoint of its six-district peer group. The school does not serve high school grades, so no graduation rate is reported, and chronic absenteeism data was also absent from the available records.
A parent considering Lynd Elementary is looking at a very small school in a small, growing rural town that functions as a bedroom community for Marshall. The academic picture from state assessments is uneven, with a notable gap between third-grade math outcomes and fourth-grade math outcomes. The school's overall proficiency index sits below the midpoint among Lyon County districts, which gives a parent a reason to ask the school directly about its instructional approach and how it supports students who are not yet meeting benchmarks. The student body is low-income by a substantial margin, and the racial composition is largely white with a significant Hispanic minority. The lack of higher-grade data means this school feeds into a larger district for middle and high school, so a family should look at those next schools to understand the full educational pathway through graduation.
See more original research from School Decision →