Three Rivers Montessori School

Three Rivers Montessori School is a K–6 school with 119 students in Elk River, Minnesota, operating as its own single-school district even though it sits geographically inside the area served by the Elk River Public School District and its much larger elementary schools.

The school's standout story is improvement. It climbed from the 14th–15th percentile of Minnesota schools in 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 to the 49th percentile in 2025-2026 — a gain of about 35 percentile points and the only movement of that size among its neighbors. Math proficiency rose from 18.75% to 45.1% and reading from 29.69% to 48.0% over three years, putting the school essentially at the state averages of 44.9% in math and 48.6% in reading for 2025-2026. Third grade is now at or above the state in both subjects, and fourth grade is above the state in math.

Even with that progress, Three Rivers remains the lowest-ranked school in its comparison group. Neighbors such as Prairie View Elementary School, Twin Lakes Elementary, Otsego Elementary, and Lincoln Elementary all rank far higher, and each exceeds the state in math by roughly 13–34 points. Science is the clearest weak spot at 20.0% versus 25.5% statewide, and fifth-grade math (20.0% vs 41.9%) is less than half the state rate; fifth- and sixth-grade reading results are suppressed by the state, so the upper-grade picture is incomplete. The school also serves a higher-poverty population than most neighbors — 30.25% free/reduced lunch, second only to Lincoln Elementary (45.67%), which nonetheless scores above Three Rivers in both math and reading. That context sets a harder starting line, but it does not account for the entire distance. The improvement is real; the gap to nearby schools remains.