Original Research by School Decision on Lincoln Elementary School
Lincoln Elementary sits on the south side of Fargo, serving kindergarten through fifth grade as part of the Fargo Public Schools district. It is a regular public school with an enrollment that places it in the mid-range for an elementary building of its grade band, and its classrooms are distributed fairly evenly across the six grade levels.
The student body is one of the more diverse profiles you will find in a North Dakota elementary school. Just under half of the students are white, with the remainder drawn from a mix of Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and multiracial backgrounds. A little over half of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which gives a sense of the economic range the school serves. Data on English learners and students with individualized education programs was not available, so those population shares cannot be characterized here.
On state testing, Lincoln's results from the current year tell a mixed academic picture. The school administered the ND A-PLUS assessment, which is a new assessment with changed cut scores, meaning this year's results are not directly comparable to prior years and no trend can be drawn. In English language arts, proficiency rates across the tested grades ranged from the low thirties to the high forties as a proportion of students scoring proficient or above, with the strongest showing in fifth grade. Math proficiency was lower, with third grade sitting in the lowest band and fourth and fifth grades landing somewhat higher but still below the middle of the range one might hope to see. Science, tested only in fourth grade at this level, landed in a similar lower band. Participation was strong across all tested grades and subjects. These are not alarming numbers, but they are modest, and a parent weighing options may want to look into how the school supports students who are still working toward proficiency, particularly in math at the early grades.
Because Lincoln serves only elementary grades, there is no graduation rate, no AP or dual-credit coursework, and no career pathway data to report. Those measures simply do not apply to a school serving kindergarten through fifth grade. Program offerings beyond the standard curriculum were not available in the data provided. Information on staffing ratios, discipline, attendance, course access, Title I status, and school locale classification was also absent, so those dimensions of the school environment cannot be described here.
The surrounding community shapes what life looks like for families at Lincoln. Fargo is a mid-sized regional hub for southeastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota, with an economy rooted in healthcare, higher education, technology, food processing, and retail. Sanford Health and Microsoft both maintain regional campuses in the city, and North Dakota State University is a major civic and economic presence, with many students living off campus in the Roosevelt neighborhood near downtown. The city has grown steadily in recent years, with postwar interstate construction pushing development south and west from the historic core. A large flood diversion project is under construction to channel Red River floodwater away from the city, and the metro area has long maintained one of the lowest unemployment rates among U.S. metropolitan areas.
For families considering the housing market around Lincoln, the zip code the school serves carries home values below both the state and national benchmarks, and rents are quite affordable relative to local incomes. Renting costs substantially less per month than carrying a mortgage at current rates, which may matter to families weighing whether to buy or rent while their children are in the early grades. The neighborhood's location on Fargo's south side places it within easy reach of the I-29 and I-94 corridors and the West Acres retail district, though like much of Fargo outside the downtown core, getting around is largely car-dependent.
In short, Lincoln Elementary is a moderately sized, racially and economically diverse neighborhood school in a growing, economically stable regional center. Its state test results are modest across subjects, with English language arts outpacing math, and the assessment framework is too new to read any trend from. Families drawn to Fargo's mix of affordability, employment access, and community amenities may find Lincoln a reasonable fit, particularly if they are prepared to engage with the school about academic support in the early grades.
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