Lincoln Secondary

Lincoln Secondary is a grades 7–12 school of 603 students in Esko, Minnesota — a small Carlton County community just west of Duluth — and it serves as the secondary campus of the Esko Public School District, which ranks among the top 3% of Minnesota districts. The headline for parents is consistency: Lincoln has earned a 5-star rating in every one of the ten school years on record (2015‑16 through 2025‑26), never falling outside the top 10% of Minnesota high schools, and its 2025‑26 rank of 33rd of 473 schools is still better than roughly 93% of the state. Outcomes match the ratings: a 96.9% graduation rate (state: 84.9%) and a 0.0% dropout rate (state: 4.2%).

Against nearby comprehensive high schools, Lincoln leads in math and reading by wide margins. Its 53.5% math proficiency and 63.8% reading proficiency sit about 15 points and 18 points above the average of Hermantown Senior High, Proctor Senior High, Wrenshall Secondary, Cloquet Senior and Carlton Secondary, and above the state in both. Notably, Hermantown Senior High graduates 96.8% of its students yet posts reading proficiency of 36.6% — a reminder that graduation rates alone say little about the academic bar a school sets. Science is the genuine soft spot: at 37.3% across all grades, Lincoln is merely average locally, and the trend is down, driven largely by a weak 8th-grade result (21.3%) even as high-school end-of-course science reaches 53.4%.

Most striking is how well Lincoln serves students who are economically disadvantaged or in special education, ranking 2nd of 333 and 1st of 221 Minnesota schools serving those populations. Because those groups are small, individual ranks can swing from year to year, but the direction is meaningful — and it is the strongest evidence that this is school effectiveness rather than favorable circumstances alone. Worth watching: a gradual percentile slide from 98th to 93rd over four years.