Hills-Beaver Creek Elementary

Hills-Beaver Creek Elementary is a PK–5 school serving 153 students in the small community of Beaver Creek, MN, and is part of the Hills-Beaver Creek School District. The district ranks 64th of 458 Minnesota districts — 86th percentile, 4 stars — while the school currently ranks 391st of 869 schools, or 55th percentile with 3 stars.

Math and reading are relative strengths: 58.5% of students are proficient in math and 57.8% in reading, both above the state's 44.9% and 48.6%. Fourth grade stands out, with 89.7% math and 79.3% reading proficiency, well above state averages and both nearby schools. Science, however, is the clearest concern: 12.5% proficiency is less than half the state's 25.5% and roughly a third of Ellsworth Elementary (36.4%) and Luverne Elementary (35.7%). Science was once a strength — 57.69% in 2022–2023 and 66.67% in 2023–2024 — before falling to 21.21% and then 12.5%. Because science is reported only for 5th grade, that gap likely reflects one class cohort, and 5th-grade math (31.3%) is also below the state's 41.9%. Third-grade reading (38.1%) trails the state's 46.8%, while 3rd-grade math (57.1%) is close to the state's 57.9%.

Overall, the school has slipped from the 98th percentile with 5 stars in 2017–2018 to the 55th percentile today, down from the 72nd percentile last year. Among neighbors, it sits between Ellsworth Elementary (52nd percentile) and Luverne Elementary (84th percentile): it outperforms Ellsworth in math and reading but lags sharply in science, and trails Luverne across the board. Low-income students rank in the 76th percentile, a bright spot, though other subgroup results shifted noticeably in a single year. With only 153 students, one class can move the numbers substantially, so multi-year trends are more meaningful than any single year's results.