Summary:
ZIP code 56636 is served by a single elementary school, King Elementary in Deer River, Minnesota — a PK–5 school with 390 students that is part of the Deer River Public School District. Because it is the only elementary school in the area, there are no local peers to compare it with; the more meaningful benchmarks are its district and Minnesota state averages. By those measures the school performs well and is improving: it ranked 183rd of 869 schools in 2025–2026 (79th percentile, 4 stars), up from 259th of 872 (70th percentile) in 2024–2025 and 301st of 881 (66th percentile, 3 stars) in 2023–2024. That is a gain of 118 rank positions in two years.
Test results are a clear strength. In 2025–2026, math proficiency was 62.8%, compared with 39.5% for the district and 44.9% statewide, while reading was 67.1%, versus 50.3% for the district and 48.6% for the state. Science was 29.4%, above the district's 18.2% and the state's 25.5%, though by a narrower margin. Third-grade results are especially strong — 82.0% proficient in math against a state figure of 57.9%, and 76.1% in reading against 46.8% — but the school's advantage over the state shrinks by 5th grade, where math is 47.1% versus 41.9% and reading is 58.8% versus 54.5%.
Looking at year-over-year change, reading rose from 56.05% to 67.1% (about 11.1 points), math slipped slightly from 63.46% to 62.8%, and science fell from 41.67% to 29.4%, a decline of roughly 12.3 points — making science the clearest area for improvement. About 68% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch, and the student/teacher ratio was 8.5 to 1 in 2024–2025. Note that test scores cover 2025–2026 while the lunch and staffing figures are from 2024–2025, and some district grade-level figures match the school's exactly, so those comparisons should be read with caution.
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