Summary
Ellis Middle is a 726-student school serving grades 7–8 at 1700 4th Ave SE in Austin, Minnesota, and it is one of only two middle-level buildings in the Austin Public School District — the other, I.J. Holton Intermediate School (grades 5–6), sits less than a tenth of a mile away and feeds directly into it, so nearly every Austin seventh- and eighth-grader passes through Ellis.
Ellis ranks 400th of 546 ranked Minnesota middle schools — the 27th percentile, 1 star — placing it near the bottom quartile of the state. About 58% of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. In 2025-26, 27.6% met the math standard, 33.1% met reading, and just 6.1% met science, against state rates of 44.9%, 48.6%, and 25.5%. Science is the clearest weakness: that figure is the lowest of any nearby school and means roughly 19 in 20 Ellis eighth-graders did not meet the standard. Math is a relative strength — Ellis beats its feeder school and Lyle Middle, though it trails Southland Middle, Grand Meadow Middle, and Blooming Prairie Intermediate School. In reading, Ellis has the lowest proficiency of every school in that comparison set, including those with similar poverty rates.
Recent trends are mixed but mostly modestly positive. Math moved from 25.6% to 22.3% to 27.6% across the last three reported years, and reading from 31.3% to 31.6% to 33.1%, while the student-teacher ratio improved sharply from 21.1:1 to 14.7:1. Science, however, fell from 15.6% to 6.1%, though the statewide science benchmark also dropped steeply in that window, which suggests a testing or reporting change rather than a one-year collapse in learning. Eighth-graders consistently outperform seventh-graders, especially in reading. The weakest measured groups are special education students (11th percentile), low-income students, English learners, and male students.
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