Original Research by School Decision on Edison Elementary School
Edison Elementary sits on Minot's southwest side, serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade as part of the Minot 1 public school district. It is a regular public school of moderate size for an elementary in this region, drawing from a community where roughly a quarter of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is predominantly white, with smaller shares of Hispanic, Native American, and multiracial students. The school does not report English-learner or special-education enrollment figures in the data we received, so those pieces of the picture are missing here.
On North Dakota's A-PLUS assessment, the most recent results show a mixed but generally middling profile. Third and fourth graders landed in a moderate proficiency band in math, with a majority of tested students reaching proficiency. Fifth-grade math was lower, landing in a band where fewer than half of students were proficient. English language arts followed a similar but somewhat weaker pattern. Third graders performed at the same moderate level as in math, but fourth-grade ELA dropped into a lower band, the weakest result across the grade levels and subjects reported. Fifth-grade ELA recovered somewhat, landing in a middling range. Fourth-grade science sat in that same middle band. Participation rates were solid across most grades, dipping slightly at fifth grade.
Because the A-PLUS is a new assessment with changed cut scores, the state flags these results as not directly comparable to prior years. That means no trend analysis is available, and families should treat this year's numbers as a baseline rather than a trajectory. Average scale scores and tested-student counts were not reported, which limits how finely one can read the results.
Minot itself is a mid-sized regional hub for northern North Dakota, shaped heavily by Minot Air Force Base about fifteen miles north, which brings military families and federal employment into the area. The city grew up as a Great Northern Railway stop and still serves as a trading center drawing from southwestern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan. Its built environment is largely auto-oriented, with a historic downtown core along Main Street and Broadway that has some walkable street life, surrounded by residential neighborhoods and strip commercial corridors along the main highways. The Souris River winds through the city, creating both green space and occasional flood risk. Publicly reported sources note the city experienced a major Souris River flood in its recent history that damaged a large swath of housing and prompted Army Corps of Engineers flood-control work. Population has been roughly stable with slight decline in recent estimates. The local economy rests on the air base, Trinity Health's regional medical center, Minot State University, agricultural trade, and Bakken oil-field service activity that has moderated since its peak.
For families thinking about housing, the area around Edison is relatively affordable compared with national benchmarks. Home values in the school's zip code sit below both state and national medians, and rents are modest. The price-to-income ratio is low, and renting costs substantially less per month than carrying a mortgage at current rates, which may matter to military families on shorter assignments or households weighing whether to buy.
The Minot 1 district has been publicly reported to be exploring redistricting and boundary changes tied to enrollment and capacity across its schools, including potential closures or repurposing of buildings. North Dakota has also expanded open enrollment policies, giving families more flexibility to choose schools within and across district lines. Both developments are worth asking about directly, since they could affect which schools students attend in coming years.
What the data paints is a school sitting in an affordable, military-influenced regional city, delivering middling academic results with some soft spots in fourth-grade literacy and fifth-grade math. Families considering Edison may want to look into the fourth-grade ELA dip and the fifth-grade math result with the school, and ask how the district's ongoing facilities and enrollment conversation might affect this building.
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