Summary:
ZIP code 56501 has one middle school, Detroit Lakes Middle, serving grades 6–8 with 617 students in the Detroit Lakes Public School District. It is a mid-sized school with a 2024–25 free/reduced lunch rate of 33.23% and a student-teacher ratio of 16.3. Because it is the only middle school in this ZIP code, there are no local peer schools to compare it against; the most useful comparisons are to state and district benchmarks and to its own prior-year results.
Academically, reading is the strongest area. All-grades reading proficiency is 51.8%, above the state’s 48.6% and close to the district’s 52.2%, and 6th-grade reading is especially strong at 65.6% versus the state’s 53.4%. Math and reading both improved year over year: math rose from 36.09% to 39.6%, and reading rose from 48.27% to 51.8%. However, all-grades math remains below the state rate of 44.9%, and science is the clearest concern at 10.8% proficiency, down from 13.99% and below the state’s 8th-grade science rate of 16.7% and the district’s all-grade science rate of 30.9%. Grade-level results also weaken in higher grades: reading drops from 65.6% in 6th grade to 42.6% in 7th and 47.9% in 8th, while math declines from 41.1% in 6th to 37.8% in 8th.
The school’s rank has improved from 213 of 545 in 2023–24 to 209 of 519 in 2024–25 to 189 of 546 in 2025–26, which is 65th percentile and 3 stars in the latest year. The district is rated higher at 75 of 458, 84th percentile, and 4 stars. Overall, the school shows real strengths in reading, particularly in 6th grade, and recent improvement in math and reading. Science is a serious relative weakness, and math remains below the state overall. The school ranks above average statewide, but it trails its district’s overall rating in this data snapshot.
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