The top reported proficiency rate is 63% in English language arts. The lowest is 30% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Mora Elementary School
Mora Elementary School serves the small county-seat town of Mora in East Central Minnesota, drawing from a community where Swedish heritage is a visible part of the town’s identity, with a large Dala horse, a bell tower, and annual events like the Vasaloppet USA ski race. The school itself is a regular public school covering preschool through sixth grade, feeding into the Mora Public School District. It is not a charter or magnet school.
The student body is predominantly white, with small shares of two-or-more-races students and Hispanic students, and very small shares of Asian, Black, and American Indian students. About half of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a level that places the school in a middle economic range. The school is large for an elementary serving only through sixth grade, with enrollment spread fairly evenly across grades, including a sizeable kindergarten class.
On state assessments, the picture varies notably by subject and grade. Reading proficiency rates across grades three through six land in a mixed range, with a stronger showing in the middle grades and a softer mark in third grade. Math proficiency also varies, with fourth grade the strongest and sixth grade the weakest. A parent may want to look into this further with the school to understand how the school supports older elementary students in math, where the sixth-grade result is the lowest in either subject across the grade span. Science is tested only in fifth grade, and that proficiency rate is lower than the reading and math rates for the same grade, though the state changed both the science assessment and its cut scores for that year, so direct comparisons to prior years are not possible. Only a single year of data was available, so no trend was observable.
When placed alongside other districts in Kanabec County, the school’s overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades lands in the highest grouping. The county contains only one other district, so this top-quartile position places Mora Elementary above that single neighbor on the proficiency index available. That context is limited, but it offers a straightforward read: within the local county, this school shows the stronger academic results.
The town of Mora itself is a slow-growing community. Its economy is anchored by healthcare, the school district, manufacturing, and county government. The district brief turned up no major recent changes of the sort that parents often watch for, such as boundary shifts, program closures, or new initiatives. The school’s own website may carry updates, but none were surfaced in this review.
There is no graduation rate, because the school serves only early and middle grades. Chronic absenteeism data was not available. Information on discipline, course access, and staffing was also absent from the data provided. A family considering this school will want to ask the district about class sizes, specialist offerings, and how the elementary experience connects to the middle and high school years within the Mora district.
The typical home in the area carries a value below both the state and national benchmarks, making this a more affordable market relative to broader averages. That may be a factor for families weighing school quality against housing costs.
The picture that emerges is of a mid-sized elementary school in a small, heritage-minded town, with academic results that are strongest in reading in the upper elementary grades and weakest in math heading into middle school, and with about half the student body coming from lower-income households. It is the higher-performing option in its immediate county, though the comparison set is small.
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