Summary:
The Heron Lake-Okabena School District serves about 260 students across just two schools in rural southwestern Minnesota: Heron Lake-Okabena Elementary for grades PK–6 and Heron Lake-Okabena Secondary for grades 7–12, with no middle school or alternative school in the district.
These two schools are moving in opposite directions. The elementary school is the district's bright spot: it ranked 291st of 869 schools in 2025–26 (67th percentile, 3 stars), a big jump from 37th percentile and 2 stars the year before. Its proficiency beats the state in every subject — math 53.3% vs. 44.9%, reading 51.7% vs. 48.6%, and science 40.0% vs. 25.5% — and it improved in all three subjects year over year. The secondary school shows the reverse: 390th of 473 schools (18th percentile, 1 star), down from 28th percentile, with proficiency far below the state at 15.4% in math, 15.3% in reading, and 7.1% in science, all declining from the prior year. Its middle grades are the weakest area, with 8th-grade science at 0%, math at 5.6%, and reading at 5.9%.
Some indicators complicate the picture. The secondary school's graduation rate of 86.9% is slightly above the state's 84.9%, yet its dropout rate of 13.0% is more than triple the state's 4.2%. Poverty levels don't explain the gap: the elementary school has a higher free/reduced-lunch rate (50.41%) than the secondary school (45.26%) but far stronger results, and its student-teacher ratio is lower at 10.5 vs. 13.6. The district as a whole sits at 338th of 458 districts (26th percentile, 1 star), which averages out two very different schools. The elementary school is strong though not uniformly above state at every grade level — 4th-grade math, 4th-grade reading, and 6th-grade reading fall below state averages — while the secondary school's middle-grade and dropout concerns are the most urgent issues for families to weigh.
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