Original Research by School Decision on Horace Mann Roosevelt Elementary School
Horace Mann Roosevelt Elementary sits on 3rd Street North in Fargo, part of the Fargo 1 school district. It serves kindergarten through fifth grade as a regular public school. The school draws from a neighborhood with strong ties to North Dakota State University, which sits nearby, and many NDSU students live off campus in the surrounding Roosevelt area. That gives the school's immediate vicinity a distinctive mix of families, renters, and university-affiliated households.
The student body is moderately sized for a Fargo elementary school. Its composition is more diverse than many North Dakota schools. White students make up the largest share, but the school also enrolls meaningful numbers of Black, Hispanic, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and multiracial students. A little over half of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which points to a economically mixed population rather than a uniformly affluent one. The school does not report IEP or English-learner counts in the data provided, so those figures are absent here rather than indicating anything about the populations themselves.
Academically, the most recent state assessment results come from the 2024-25 school year under North Dakota's A-PLUS assessment. The state changed both the assessment name and the proficiency cut scores this year, which means the results are not directly comparable to prior years and no trend can be calculated. With that caveat in mind, the picture across grade levels is mixed.
In math, third-grade proficiency falls in a lower range, fourth-grade results sit in a middle band, and fifth-grade results reach a higher range where roughly half or slightly more of tested students were proficient. That upward arc by grade is a pattern some parents may find encouraging, though the third-grade results are softer and worth a conversation with the school. In English language arts, the picture is more uneven. Third grade lands in a mid-range band, fourth grade drops to a lower range, and fifth grade rebounds to the higher band matching its math results. Science, tested only in fourth grade, landed in a lower range similar to the third-grade math result. Participation rates were generally high, with nearly all students tested in most grades.
The school does not have graduation rate data, which is expected since it serves only elementary grades. No civil-rights, discipline, staffing, attendance, or course-access data was available in the provided material. The school's Title I status is also listed as null. We looked for program offerings such as magnet designation, special curricula, or extracurriculars and found none reported. The same applies to the district brief, which did not surface parent-relevant changes such as referendums, curriculum shifts, or property-tax adjustments, so there is little to report on the district's recent direction.
Fargo itself is the regional hub for southeastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota. Its economy has moved beyond agriculture toward food processing, manufacturing, technology, retail, higher education, and healthcare. Sanford Health and Microsoft both maintain regional campuses in the city center, and NDSU is a core civic and economic institution. The West Acres Shopping Center near the I-29 and I-94 interchange anchors regional retail. Downtown Fargo has cultural venues and a growing NDSU presence, though the city's postwar growth pushed development south and west of the original core, and car dependence is high outside downtown. The metro area has historically had very low unemployment.
Housing in the school's zip code is moderately priced relative to national figures but sits close to the state benchmark. Typical home values run below the national median, and rents are affordable relative to local incomes, with rent consuming a modest portion of household earnings. Home values have been appreciating, though at a pace somewhat slower than the statewide rate. For families considering the area, this means buying a home near the school is achievable by national standards but not bargain-priced, and renting remains a practical option.
Horace Mann Roosevelt is a school where the academic results are genuinely mixed, with stronger upper-grade outcomes and weaker spots in the middle grades, set against a diverse student body in a university-adjacent neighborhood. A parent weighing this school would do well to ask about how the school supports students in the grades where proficiency dips and what drives the stronger fifth-grade results. The surrounding community offers stability, employment, and cultural amenities, and the housing market is accessible without being deeply discounted.
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