Summary:
Butterfield-Odin Public Schools is a small Minnesota district with just 2 schools serving a combined 213 students, with grades PK–6 at Butterfield Elementary and grades 7–12 at Butterfield Secondary (there is no separate middle school).
The district overall is rated 373rd of 458 in Minnesota — the 19th percentile, with 1 star — but the two schools look very different. Butterfield Elementary is the stronger school, beating the district average in math, reading, and science in both 2024–2025 and 2025–2026. Its standout grades are 5th grade, where math is 50% proficient versus 41.9% statewide and reading is 57.1% versus 54.5% statewide; elementary science also nearly doubled, from 11.76% to 21.4%. Butterfield Secondary trails the district in every subject both years, with 2025–2026 all-grades proficiency of 26.7% in math (district 30.8%, state 44.9%), 22.2% in reading (district 28.8%, state 48.6%), and 6.5% in science (district 11.1%, state 25.5%). It also posts a 70.3% graduation rate versus 84.9% statewide, a 7.4% dropout rate versus 4.2% statewide, and 0% 8th grade science proficiency versus 16.7% statewide. In 2025–2026 the elementary outscored the secondary by 7.2 points in math, 11.7 in reading, and 14.9 in science.
Other context matters for families: free/reduced lunch is 75.45% at the elementary and 64.08% at the secondary, while student-teacher ratios are relatively low at 8.6 and 11 respectively. Those favorable ratios have not translated into state-level proficiency or graduation results, particularly at the secondary level. Science is a district-wide weak spot — even the improved elementary score remains below the state average — and elementary rank history has moved between 26th and 32nd percentile, while secondary has stayed between 13th and 18th percentile. With only 110 elementary and 103 secondary students, grade-level percentages rest on small groups, so year-to-year swings and extremes like 0% should be read with caution.
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