The top reported proficiency rate is 32% in English language arts. The lowest is 27% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Blumengard Colony Elementary - 06
Blumengard Colony Elementary sits in the Faulkton Area Schools district, serving kindergarten through eighth grade on a rural stretch of South Dakota prairie. The school is very small even by rural standards, with just a few dozen students spread across nine grade levels, which means most classrooms combine ages and every child is known individually. The enrollment is entirely white, consistent with the colony community it serves. This is a school shaped by a specific cultural and religious setting rather than a conventional town attendance zone, and families considering it are almost certainly already part of that community.
State assessment results are available for math and English language arts, and both show a modest share of students reaching proficiency. In math, fewer than a third of tested students met the proficient-or-above benchmark, and in English language arts the proficient share was only slightly higher. Science results were suppressed, likely because the number of tested students in the relevant grades was too small to report reliably under state privacy rules. Every student who was expected to test did participate, which means the results reflect the full cohort rather than a partial sample. A parent may want to look into how the school supports students who are below proficiency, particularly in math, and what instructional approaches the colony and district use to strengthen outcomes in this small-group setting.
The school does not serve high school grades, so there is no graduation rate to report, and no college or career readiness data applies here. Free and reduced-price lunch counts, special education rates, and English learner figures were not available in the data provided, so it is not possible to characterize the economic or disability profile of the student body from what was available. Civil rights data such as discipline or harassment reports were also absent, so those dimensions cannot be described.
Faulkton itself is a small farming and ranching community that serves as the county seat of Faulk County. The local economy runs on agriculture, with soybeans, corn, rye, and sunflowers in the fields and beef cattle operations throughout the surrounding area. The town sits along a U.S. highway and has a compact footprint, with the courthouse and civic functions in its center. Lake Faulkton, fed by the South Fork of the Snake River, sits a short distance west and serves as a recreational anchor. The community is known locally as the Carousel City for a historic carousel that operates from late spring through mid-August. Population figures suggest the town has been growing modestly in recent years, though no major housing developments or large-scale construction projects were identified in the research. No specific walkability or built-environment details were found, and major employers beyond the agricultural sector were not named in available sources.
The parent district, Faulkton Area Schools, had no recently reported parent-relevant changes such as bond referendums, curriculum overhauls, or facility projects that surfaced in the search, so there is little to add on that front. No neighbor comparison data was provided for this school, which limits the ability to position it against nearby schools or districts in the county.
For a family already connected to the Blumengard colony, this school offers a tightly knit, single-culture environment where children learn alongside siblings and neighbors in multi-grade classrooms. The academic results are below state midpoints in the tested subjects, and the tiny tested cohort means any single year can swing considerably. Questions worth bringing to the school and district include how reading and math instruction is structured across combined grades, what interventions exist for students below proficiency, and how the transition to high school works once students finish eighth grade and move into the broader Faulkton Area system.
See more original research from School Decision →