North Woods Secondary

North Woods Secondary is a small, rural public school in Cook, Minnesota — a community in northern St. Louis County — serving grades 7–12 with 245 students as part of the St. Louis County School District. It currently ranks 281st of 473 Minnesota high schools (41st percentile, 2 stars) for 2025–26. Because there are no other schools within 20 miles, the most useful comparisons are to its own district and to the state as a whole.

The clearest strength is completion: North Woods graduates 90.9% of its students, well above Minnesota's 84.9%, and it has out-graduated the state by 6 to 12 percentage points every year for five years. Reading is also a relative bright spot at 43.2% proficiency, which edged above the district's 40.8% for the first time, and science (18.9%) likewise came in above the district. Dropout is the number to watch, though — after four years at or below the state rate, including two years at zero, the school posted 4.5% in 2024–25, above both the state (4.2%) and the district (3.3%).

Math remains the persistent weakness. Only 17.9% of students are proficient, against 44.9% statewide — a 27-point gap that has barely moved in four years. Eleventh-grade math is 9.1%, versus 35.3% statewide, and special education students have ranked in the bottom quarter each of the last three years. The school's reading-to-math gap of 25.3 points is far wider than the state's, so the 2025–26 improvement is real but narrow, driven by reading rather than by the subject where the school struggles most. Families may want to watch whether the dropout uptick continues and whether anything shifts in math.