Original Research by School Decision on Oakes Elementary School
Oakes Elementary School sits at 804 Main Avenue in Oakes, North Dakota, serving pre-kindergarten through sixth grade as part of Oakes School District #41. The enrollment is modest, with roughly two and a half dozen students per grade level, and the student body is predominantly white. A small but visible share of students are Hispanic, and the school includes a handful of students identifying as American Indian or Alaska Native, Black, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and two or more races. About a fifth of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a relatively low figure for a rural North Dakota community.
State testing data comes from the 2024-25 administration of North Dakota's A-PLUS assessment, a newly named test with revised proficiency cut scores. Because the assessment changed this year, trend comparisons with prior years are not possible. Proficiency is reported as ranges rather than single point estimates, which limits precision but still gives a sense of where students stand.
In math, third graders landed in a range that suggests roughly a third to just under half were proficient, the lowest result across grade levels. Fourth graders performed meaningfully better, with a majority proficient, and fifth graders fell in between. Sixth graders were the strongest, with a clear majority reaching proficiency. Additional rows for grades seven and eight appear in the data, though the school's listed grade span ends at sixth; these likely reflect district-wide reporting rather than students physically at this building.
English language arts results follow a similar arc. Third and fourth graders were in the lower range, with somewhere around a third to just under half proficient. Fifth and sixth graders improved to where a majority were proficient. Again, seventh- and eighth-grade rows appear in the data set, likely reflecting the broader district context. Science was tested in fourth and eighth grade, with both landing in a range where a majority were proficient.
Across all grades combined, the school's overall proficiency rate sits at about half in math, just under half in English language arts, and near three-fifths in science. These are middling results. The upper grades at the school appear stronger than the lower grades, which may reflect students growing into the curriculum as they advance, though a parent may want to look into the third- and fourth-grade results further with the school to understand what support is in place for early learners. Participation rates were solid across all tested grades.
Oakes itself is a small rural hub in Dickey County, southeastern North Dakota. Publicly reported sources describe it as primarily an agricultural community, with corn and soybeans dominating the surrounding farmland, but the town also has a sizable industrial sector centered on grain handling and equipment along its rail lines. A main street business district runs through the center of town. Healthcare and agriculture-related industry are the two dominant employment sectors, with CHI Oakes Public, the Good Samaritan Society, and Agtegra among the key employers.
The town is compact, built on a traditional small-town grid, and the school sits within the residential and commercial fabric rather than on a separated campus. Civic life centers on Main Avenue and nearby parks. Recreational amenities include a softball complex, bowling alley, golf course, movie theater, municipal pool, and parks. State Highways 1 and 11 connect Oakes to larger cities, with Aberdeen, South Dakota about an hour south and Fargo to the north.
Housing in the Oakes area is affordable relative to both state and national benchmarks. The typical home value sits well below the North Dakota state level and roughly half the national figure, making ownership accessible on local incomes. The market has seen modest appreciation recently. No public library is explicitly mentioned in available sources, and the town is experiencing gradual population decline, though the city markets itself as actively recruiting new residents through a relocation specialist program.
The district brief turned up little in the way of recent parent-relevant changes, so there is nothing new to report on that front. Information on Title I status, staffing, discipline, course access, special education rates, and English learner counts was either missing or not reported for this school, which limits the picture of student supports. A family considering Oakes Elementary would be looking at a small, community-embedded school in an affordable rural town with steady if unspectacular academic results, stronger in the upper elementary grades than the lower ones, in a place where the school sits at the center of daily life rather than on the edge of it.
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