Original Research by School Decision on Hazen High School
Hazen High School sits in a small town along the western edge of North Dakota's coal and energy country, in Mercer County. The town of Hazen grew rapidly during the energy boom decades and has since settled into a stable, slightly declining population. The local economy leans on nearby coal mines and power plants, agriculture, and recreation tied to Lake Sakakawea, with Sakakawea Medical Center, West River Telecom Cooperative, and Roughrider Electric Cooperative among the publicly reported major employers. The community has a compact downtown grid along the highway, summer concerts in the parks, walking and biking trails, and a hockey rink, but no public transit. Housing here is affordable relative to state and national benchmarks, with typical home values sitting below both the North Dakota and national medians, and a price-to-income ratio that looks manageable for working families.
The school itself is a regular public high school serving grades nine through twelve, with a small enrollment typical of a rural community. The student body is predominantly white, with a small share of American Indian or Alaska Native students and a scattering of other racial and ethnic backgrounds. The free or reduced-price lunch rate is modest, well below what many rural schools see, which fits the broader picture of a working community with steady energy-sector employment. Data on individualized education programs and English learner status was not reported, so those pieces of the student-support picture are missing here.
Academic results from the most recent state assessment cycle show a split picture. English language arts proficiency landed above the halfway mark, which is a solid result for a small rural high school. Science proficiency was close to that same level. Mathematics was the clear soft spot, with only about a quarter of students scoring proficient. This is a gap a parent may want to look into further with the school, particularly what coursework, staffing, or intervention supports are in place for math. Only a single year of results was available, so there is no trend to read, upward or downward. No summary metrics, graduation rate, course access, staffing, discipline, or program offerings were reported in the data provided, and no nationally standardized academic context was available for comparison. The absence of a graduation rate and program detail leaves a real hole for any family trying to weigh this school against alternatives.
The district brief for Hazen 3 turned up little in the way of publicly reported recent changes, so there is nothing to relay on strategic priorities, budget shifts, or program launches. A family considering this school should treat the available data as a partial snapshot rather than a full portrait. What is visible is a small, stable high school in an affordable energy-community town, with respectable reading and science results and a mathematics result that deserves a direct question to the school. What is not visible is whether advanced coursework, career and technical pathways, extracurricular depth, or graduation outcomes are strong, thin, or somewhere in between, and the data does not let a reader draw a conclusion either way.
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