Summary:
Tower, Minnesota has two schools serving a combined 145 students across the PK–12 span: Tower-Soudan Elementary, a PK–6 school with 95 students in the St. Louis County School District, and Vermilion Country School, a 7–12 school with 50 students that operates as its own district, so families here switch districts at seventh grade.
Academically, Tower-Soudan Elementary is the stronger performer: in 2025–2026, 40.9% of students were proficient in math and 42.2% in reading, both above the St. Louis County School District averages (31.7% and 40.8%) but below the state (44.9% and 48.6%). Its rank climbed from the 20th percentile in 2022–2023 to the 33rd percentile in 2025–2026, earning 2 stars. At Vermilion Country School, all-grades math proficiency was 0% in both 2024–2025 and 2025–2026, reading rose from 11.11% to 22.7%, and its latest rank is the 21st percentile. Science is a shared weak spot, at 16.7% and 16.1% against a state average of 25.5%. Notably, Vermilion reported a 92.3% graduation rate and a 0.0% dropout rate in 2023–2024, a sharp contrast with its test results.
Both schools serve economically disadvantaged populations — free/reduced lunch is 58.95% at Tower-Soudan and 80% at Vermilion — and both have low student-teacher ratios (10.9 and 9.2). With just 95 and 50 students, grade-level percentages swing widely, and many figures are suppressed by the state for privacy; those should be treated as unknown rather than as zeros or weaknesses.
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