Summary:
ZIP code 55056 in North Branch, Minnesota is home to four elementary-level schools that together serve a wide span of grades — from prekindergarten through 8th grade — under North Branch Area Public Schools plus one charter school, with total listed enrollment of about 1,361 students.
Sunrise River Elementary School is the largest school here, with 960 students in grades 1–5, and it is the strongest math performer: 55.5% of its students were proficient in math in 2025–2026, above both the 44.9% state rate and the 38.9% district rate. Its 3rd- and 4th-grade math results (68.1% and 62.3%) are well above state averages, but 5th-grade math (34.6%), reading (46.3%) and science (22.5%) fall below state levels. Phoenix Academy Charter School is far smaller, with 156 students in grades K–8, and its results are much more uneven. Its 3rd-grade math (72.2%) is the highest in the area and its all-grade science (26.7%) edges past the state, but 4th-grade math (39.3%) and reading (35.7%) trail well behind, and its all-grade reading (42.9%) sits below the state's 48.6%. Sunrise River has held a 3-star rating in each of the last three years, though it slipped from the 64th percentile in 2023–2024 to the mid-50s since; Phoenix remains a 2-star school, moving between the 35th and 48th percentiles.
North Branch Area Education Center serves only prekindergarten and kindergarten (239 students), so it has no state test scores or rankings; it does report the area's lowest student-teacher ratio, 13.1. Distance Learning Acadmy Elementary has just 6 students, and its test results are suppressed by the state, meaning they are unknown rather than a sign of low performance. One shared weakness stands out: both tested schools score below the state in 5th-grade math, at 34.6% for Sunrise River and 33.3% for Phoenix. Enrollment size, grade spans and poverty rates (30.62% free/reduced lunch at Sunrise River versus 42.95% at Phoenix) differ enough that these schools are not directly comparable.
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