Summary:
ZIP code 55804 in Duluth, Minnesota is home to three elementary schools — Lester Park Elementary, North Shore Community School, and Lakewood Elementary — serving grades PK through 6 with a combined enrollment of 1,119 students. Lester Park and Lakewood belong to Duluth Public School District, while North Shore operates as its own district and is the only one of the three to serve 6th grade. All three schools exceed the Minnesota state average in both math and reading proficiency, making this a notably strong cluster of elementary schools.
Lakewood Elementary is the overall standout, ranking in the top 8% of Minnesota elementary schools with 5 stars in each of the last three years (59th of 869, 93rd percentile in 2025–26). It posts the highest all-grade reading score in the group at 72.2%, along with 69.9% in math and 41.3% in science — all well above district and state. Notably, it achieves this with the highest poverty indicator (34.65% FRPL) and the highest student/teacher ratio (15.9) in the group. Lester Park Elementary leads in math (70.1%) and science (50.0%) and is on the rise, climbing from 86th to 92nd percentile and from 4 to 5 stars. It is also the largest school (510 students) with the lowest FRPL (21.18%) and lowest student/teacher ratio (13.3).
North Shore Community School shows a mixed picture: it beats the state in math (56.6%) and reading (61.1%), and its 6th-grade reading (78.6%) and math (58.1%) are strong, but its all-grade science fell from 32.0% to 12.0% — far below the state's 25.5% — and its rank slipped to 67th percentile and 3 stars. A shared weak spot across the group is 5th-grade math, where North Shore (39.2%) falls below both the state and district. School size does not track simply with outcomes here: the largest school performs very well, and the smallest ranks highest overall.
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