Summary:
Heron Lake-Okabena School District is home to a single high school, Heron Lake-Okabena Secondary, located at 124 N Minnesota Ave in Okabena, MN. It serves grades 7–12 with an enrollment of 137 students, giving it a student-teacher ratio of 13.6 and a free/reduced lunch rate of 45.26%, both notable context for the results below. Because there are no other high schools in the district to compare against, the meaningful benchmarks are the district overall and the state of Minnesota.
The school's profile is mixed. On the positive side, the 2024–2025 graduation rate is 86.9%, above the Minnesota state rate of 84.9% by 2.0 percentage points. However, the dropout rate is 13.0% against 4.2% statewide — roughly 3.1 times the state rate. Academics are a clear concern: in 2025–2026, proficiency was 15.4% in math, 15.3% in reading, and 7.1% in science, trailing the state by 29.5, 33.3, and 18.4 percentage points respectively, and below the district in every subject. Eighth grade is the sharpest weak point, with 5.6% proficient in math, 5.9% in reading, and 0.0% in science.
Rankings have slipped as well. The school earned 1 star in each of the last three years, but its percentile rank fell from 28 in 2024–2025 to 18 in 2025–2026, ranking 390 of 473 schools. All-grade scores declined year over year: reading fell 17.39 points, science 12.25, and math 9.13. Note that the 2024–2025 reading test is labeled MCA-III and the 2025–2026 test MCA-IV, so that trend deserves monitoring. With roughly 20–25 students per grade, single-year percentages can swing widely from just one or two students, making multi-year patterns more reliable than any single result.
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