North Dakota school safety

Five schools make up McKenzie Co 1's scored set, and all five filed records complete enough to score. That is the exception in North Dakota, and it points at what this page can actually tell you: not which schools are safe, but whose reporting to the federal government holds up.

The figures come from the Civil Rights Data Collection for 2021-22. The state has 532 schools in that collection. We publish a safety score for 164 of them. We grade the reporting doubtful at 23 schools — 4.3% of the state, against 11.3% nationally. A school lands there when we compare it to roughly 1,500 American schools closest to it in enrollment that teach the same grades, and find that schools of that size normally report several incidents, or ten or more, while this one reported almost none. Small schools that report nothing get the benefit of the doubt; a genuine zero is common at that size. They still get no score, because reporting nothing is not evidence of safety.

So North Dakota's paperwork is more consistent than the national picture. That is a statement about filing, not about children. The comparison behind every grade is national and is not adjusted for state. Differences between states in this data are differences in reporting behavior. Nothing here says a North Dakota school is safer than one in Ohio, and nothing here says any school is dangerous.

Ranked districts

North Dakota has 178 school districts. Seven have enough scoreable schools to rank at all. Most districts in the state are simply too small — a district needs several schools with records we believe before a district-level number means anything, and most here do not have them.

Among the ranked seven: Fargo 1 comes out safer than 74% of ranked US districts, with 9 of the 25 schools in its scored set complete enough to score. West Fargo 6 is safer than 63%, with 19 of 24. McKenzie Co 1 is also safer than 63%, with 5 of 5. Grand Forks 1 is safer than 28%, with 10 of 18. Bismarck 1 is safer than 6%, with 15 of 24. Each placement rests only on that district's scored schools, and reflects reported incident rates — what was written down, and how much of it we could verify.

Safest ranked cities in North Dakota

Percentile is against all ranked U.S. cities (higher = safer). Only cities with ≥5 trustworthy-data schools are ranked. Home value is Zillow's ZHVI.

Safest ranked districts

Every North Dakota city with schools

Every North Dakota school district