Summary:
The six schools in Brookings School District 05-1 serve elementary through high school students in the Brookings area and enroll 3,465 students, from 316 at Hillcrest Elementary to 979 at Brookings High School - 01. The most important finding is the wide spread in comparable third-grade results: in 2025–26, proficiency ranged from 34% to 54% in English language arts (ELA) and from 41% to 74% in math across the three elementary schools reporting those results.
Dakota Prairie Elementary - 07 led those third-grade comparisons, with 54% proficient in ELA and 74% in math—about 1 and 16 points above second-place Hillcrest Elementary - 04. Dakota Prairie was also 11 points above the state in ELA and 23 points above in math. Medary Elementary - 05 was lowest at 34% in ELA and 41% in math, 10 and 11 points below state results. Outside that grade-matched comparison, Camelot Intermediate - 06 was above state results in its all-grades ELA and math and fifth-grade science; Brookings High was above state results in all three reported ACT subjects. These are different grade spans and tests, not a direct school ranking.
Recent grade-three changes were sharply different: Hillcrest rose 17 points in ELA and 18 in math from 2024–25, while Medary fell 16 and 14 points; Dakota Prairie’s ELA fell 7 points while its math rose 2. Income figures offer context, not an explanation: all six schools reported free/reduced lunch eligible for 2024–25, ranging from 12% at Dakota Prairie to 27% at Medary. SchoolDigger ranks Brookings High 48 of 130 (3 stars), Camelot 111 of 203 (2 stars), and George S. Mickelson Middle School - 02 93 of 151 (2 stars). The middle school’s all-grades math was 4 points below the state, while its ELA was essentially at the state result; Brookings High’s graduation rate was 90%, 3 points above the state. Results vary by grade and subject, so comparisons are most useful when the measures match.
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