Hayfield Public School District

Hayfield Public School District is a small Minnesota district serving 621 students across two schools: Hayfield Elementary, covering grades PK–5 with 302 students, and Hayfield Secondary, covering grades 6–12 with 319 students. Overall the district ranks 324 of 458 in Minnesota, placing it at the 29th percentile with a 1-star rating, so it sits in the bottom third of the state even though there are clear bright spots within each school.

Hayfield Elementary is the stronger performer academically. Its all-grades math proficiency of 51.1% beats both the district (39.4%) and the state (44.9%), and 4th-grade math reaches 68.8% versus the state's 55.2%. The school also improved its math result by 8.6 points year over year and lifted its rank to the 35th percentile with 2 stars. Its student-teacher ratio of 10.2 is notably lower than the secondary school's 15.1. Hayfield Secondary stands out in a different way: its 97.1% graduation rate far exceeds the state's 84.9%, and its dropout rate is 0.0% against the state's 4.2%.

Those strengths come with real challenges. Reading falls below state averages at both schools — 36.9% at the elementary, 35.0% at the secondary, and 35.9% district-wide, versus 48.6% for the state. Science is the weakest subject: district proficiency is 13.1% against the state's 25.5%, with the secondary school at 11.8% and 8th-grade science at just 5.9% versus 16.7%. The secondary school's rank has also slipped from the 48th percentile in 2023–2024 to the 29th percentile with 1 star in 2025–2026, while the elementary school moved in the opposite direction.