Summary:
ZIP code 55912 in Austin, Minnesota is served by two middle-level schools — I.J. Holton Intermediate School for grades 5–6 and Ellis Middle for grades 7–8 — which together enroll about 1,438 students and sit a block apart on the same street, functioning as a single grades 5–8 pipeline. Both belong to the Austin Public School District, which ranks 388th of 458 Minnesota districts. The two schools serve a demographically near-identical population, with free/reduced lunch rates of 58.99% at I.J. Holton and 58.26% at Ellis.
Neither school is a standout: every subject at every grade level in both years falls below the Minnesota state average. What differs is where each is relatively stronger. I.J. Holton is the reading school — 36.6% proficient, the highest score either school posted in any subject, and the only all-grade figure at either school that beats its own district average (33.7%). Its 5th-grade reading of 38.5% is the top grade-level score in the data. But I.J. Holton is the weaker math school at 19.2%, well under Ellis's 27.6%, which itself edges the district (26.8%). Ellis's 8th-grade reading of 37.6% is the second-highest single score in the set. In short, a student moving from I.J. Holton to Ellis goes from a building that outperforms its district in reading to one that underperforms it.
The clearest trend is that science is falling at both schools — 1.5 points at Ellis and 3.3 points at I.J. Holton — and reaches under 11% proficiency at every grade where it is tested. Ellis is the only school with a rank history, improving modestly from the 22nd to the 27th percentile, with its largest gain in math (+5.3 points), though it remains in roughly the bottom quarter of state middle schools. Smaller classes are the one area I.J. Holton leads, at 13.7 students per teacher versus 14.7.
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