Summary:
Lester Prairie, Minnesota has a single elementary school: Lester Prairie Elementary, which serves students in grades PK through 6 and enrolls 213 students. It is the only elementary school in the Lester Prairie Public School District, so families here have no local alternative to compare it with — the meaningful benchmarks are the district and the state of Minnesota. Recently the school ranked 643 out of 869 Minnesota elementary schools for 2025–2026, placing it in the 26th percentile with 1 star, down from the 35th percentile and 2 stars the year before and slightly below its 30th percentile in 2023–2024.
Reading is the school's strongest area. In 2025–2026, 39.2% of students were proficient in reading, above the district's 33.8% but below the state's 48.6%, and the school outperformed its district in reading in both reported years. Third grade reading was the standout result: 45.8% proficient, only 1.0 percentage point behind the state's 46.8% and the smallest gap of any subject or grade. Math was also competitive in 2024–2025, when all-grades math reached 45.77%, slightly above both the district (44.62%) and the state (45.21%).
Other results are weaker. Science proficiency was 11.5% in 2025–2026 and 5.71% in 2024–2025, far below the state's roughly 25–26%. Math fell sharply from 45.77% to 31.7%, a drop of about 14 points that left it 13.2 points below the state and below the district as well; the district also edged ahead in science (14.4% vs. 11.5%) while trailing in reading. Grade-level gaps versus the state ranged from just 1.0 point in 3rd grade reading to 24.6 points in 3rd grade math. For context, 36.15% of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch in 2024–2025, and the student-teacher ratio was 11.9 to 1.
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