Best Public Schools in Le Center, MN

Le Center, Minnesota has two schools in this data set, both classified as elementary, together enrolling 396 students in grades PK–8. Le Center Pre K-8 is by far the larger, with 385 students (97.2% of the total) in grades PK–8, part of the Tri-City United School District, which is ranked 206 of 458 schools (55th percentile, 3 stars). SW Metro Level 3 enrolls just 11 students in grades K–8 and belongs to Southwest Metro Intermediate 288, which has no district rank or star rating. Both serve similar shares of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch — 38.96% and 36.36% — but their student-teacher ratios differ widely: 10.9 versus 4.8.

Only Le Center Pre K-8 can be meaningfully evaluated on achievement, since it is the only school here with school-level MCA results. Reading is its clear strength: all-grade Reading was 51.2% in 2025–26, above the district's 46.7% and the state's 48.6%, and 5th-grade Reading reached 70.3%, the highest figure in this data. Math is the concern, falling from 47.31% in 2024–25 to 40.1% in 2025–26 — a 7.21-point drop while the state was nearly flat — moving the school below the state rate. Science improved from 19.05% to 21.8% but still trails the state's 25.5%. Its rank also declined: 66th percentile with 3 stars in 2023–24, then 60th percentile with 3 stars, then 43rd percentile with 2 stars in 2025–26.

SW Metro Level 3 is too small for fair comparison: with 11 students, the state suppressed all of its school-level test scores, so it cannot be labeled high- or low-performing from this data. Its district, Southwest Metro Intermediate 288, reports far-below-state aggregate proficiency — Math 8.7%, Reading 17.5%, Science 7.1% — but those are district-wide figures, not the school's own results. Parents comparing the two should note that Le Center Pre K-8 is a full PK–8 school with published results and a declining rank, while SW Metro Level 3 appears to be a very small program whose performance is not publicly reportable. One data-quality note: both list the same street address but different ZIP codes, and 2024–25 Reading is labeled MCA-III while 2025–26 Reading is labeled MCA-IV.