Summary:
The Hinckley-Finlayson School District in east-central Minnesota serves about 869 students across four schools: two elementary schools, two high schools, and no middle school, which means grades 7–8 are housed inside Hinckley-Finlayson Secondary, a grade 7–12 building. The district's other high school, Empower Learning Center, serves grades 10–12 with only 18 students. Overall, the district ranks 302 of 458 in Minnesota, at the 34th percentile with 2 stars. Several test-score values are suppressed by the state and shown as "—"; these are unknown, not zeros.
Finlayson Elementary is the clear standout: with just 58 students, it earned 3 stars and a 60th percentile rank (350 of 869) in 2025-2026, up from the 35th percentile and 2 stars in 2023-2024. Its math (57.1%) and science (30%) beat both the district and the state, while reading (39.3%) beats the district but trails the state. It also has the lowest student-teacher ratio, 10.1. Hinckley Elementary (395 students) is mixed: math 39.9% and reading 35.3% beat the district but trail the state, science is 15.2% (lowest in the district), and 4th grade math (55.8%) is slightly above the state. The largest school, Hinckley-Finlayson Secondary (398 students), posts the lowest all-grade math (16.7%), reading (28.3%), and especially weak 8th grade math (11.3% vs the state's 42.3%), though its rank climbed from the 16th percentile in 2023-2024 to the 42nd percentile in 2025-2026.
Graduation and dropout rates are a district-wide concern: the secondary school graduates 82.5% of students and Empower 80.0%, both below the state's 84.9%, while dropout rates are 7.9% and 10.0% against the state's 4.2%. Poverty indicators are high everywhere — every school's FRPL rate exceeds 50%, reaching 72.22% at Empower and 63.29% at Hinckley Elementary. Because Finlayson's grade-level scores and almost all of Empower's test scores are suppressed, those gaps cannot be evaluated from this data.
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