Lake Of The Woods Elementary

Lake Of The Woods Elementary in Baudette, MN is a PK–5 school serving 234 students, and it is the only elementary school in the Lake Of The Woods School District, located in an isolated part of northern Minnesota with no other schools within 20 miles.

Test scores trail Minnesota averages in every subject, and the gap has widened over the past four years. In 2025-26, 29.3% of students met standards in math (state: 44.9%), 37.4% in reading (state: 48.6%), and 4.3% in science (state: 25.5%). Science shows the most dramatic change, falling from 55.6% in 2022-23 to 4.3% — a 51-point drop. Because science is tested only in 5th grade, those figures rest on a small number of students, so the multi-year direction is a more reliable signal than any single year. The school also once outperformed its own district in all three subjects; now it leads only in reading.

Performance varies sharply by grade and subject. Third-grade math (44.7%) is the school's strongest result, while 5th-grade math sits at 4.3%, pointing to a specific issue in upper-elementary math and science rather than a building-wide problem — 5th-grade reading (52.2%) is nearly at the state average. Results for students from low-income families rank in the 14th percentile statewide, down from the 41st two years earlier. One clear strength is staffing: a 13.5:1 student-teacher ratio, improved from 14.4:1 in 2022-23.