Summary:
ZIP code 56011 has two elementary schools, both in the Belle Plaine Public School District in Minnesota, and the district itself is rated 80th of 458 districts, in the 83rd percentile with 4 stars. The two schools split the elementary grades rather than competing for the same students: Chatfield Elementary serves PK–2 with 308 students, and Oak Crest Elementary serves grades 3–6 with 432 students, together accounting for 740 elementary students in the ZIP.
Oak Crest Elementary is the only school here with current test-score data, and its results are above the state in all three subjects for 2025–2026: math at 55.7% proficient versus the district's 51% and the state's 44.9%, reading at 49.4% versus 50.3% district and 48.6% state, and science at 33.3% versus 29.4% district and 25.5% state. Math is its clearest strength, beating the state by 10.8 percentage points and finishing above the state in every tested grade, with the largest margins in 5th grade (+13.0 points) and 6th grade (+11.0 points). Reading is more mixed — above the state overall but below the district, and above the state only in 5th grade. Science rose sharply from 19.35% the prior year to 33.3%; because the all-grade figure matches the 5th-grade figure, that jump likely reflects a single cohort and should be read cautiously. Oak Crest ranks 306th of 869 schools, in the 65th percentile with 3 stars, up from the 60th percentile a year earlier.
Chatfield Elementary has no current MCA test-score rows because it serves PK–2, so its academic performance cannot be compared using these data; its only rank history is from 2004–2007, when it placed between 417th and 491st, in the 37th–44th percentile with 2 stars. Its standout metric is class size: a student/teacher ratio of 10.9, which is 34.3% lower than Oak Crest's 16.6. On socioeconomic indicators the schools look very similar, with free/reduced lunch rates of 30.19% at Chatfield and 30.79% at Oak Crest — a difference of only 0.60 percentage points.
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