Part of the Minnesota Graduation Rates 2024ET series.

Onamia Public School District^↗ET reported an 83.0% four-year graduation rate for the Class of 2020. Its rate then fell in every published year through 2024, when it reached 41.1%.

The endpoint decline was 41.9 percentage points. Among Minnesota districts with graduation cohorts of at least 20 students at both endpoints, Onamia had the second-largest decline from 2020 to 2024.

Four negative annual changes

The Class of 2021 posted a 65.2% rate, down 17.8 points. The rate fell another 7.2 points to 58.0% in 2022, then 5.2 points to 52.8% in 2023. The 2024 rate fell 11.7 points to 41.1%.

Graduating class	Rate	Annual change	Graduates	Cohort	Did not graduate
2020	83.0%	—	39	47	8
2021	65.2%	-17.8	30	46	16
2022	58.0%	-7.2	29	50	21
2023	52.8%	-5.2	19	36	17
2024	41.1%	-11.7	23	56	33

The sequence matters. One small cohort can produce a large percentage swing, but Onamia's published rate moved in the same direction across four adjacent classes. The data establishes the direction and size of that change. It does not identify its cause.

The 2024 cohort was the largest in the window

Onamia's 2024 cohort contained 56 students, the largest count in the five-year series. Twenty-three graduated within the reported period and 33 did not. The non-graduate share was 58.9%.

In 2020, 39 of 47 cohort members graduated and eight did not. By 2024, the cohort was nine students larger, the graduate count was 16 lower and the non-graduate count was 25 higher.

The five published cohorts averaged 47 students. That gives the counts a human scale, but it does not turn them into evidence about attendance, course completion, mobility, staffing or any other mechanism.

A district comparison, with limits

Red Lake Public School District^↗ET provides a different pattern in the same shipped data. Its graduation rate remained below 30% in all five years from 2020 through 2024. In 2024, Red Lake reported a 22.2% rate, with 22 graduates in a cohort of 99.

Onamia's record is different because it begins higher and then declines every year in the window. The comparison describes two published trajectories. It does not establish that the districts share a cause or that one district is an appropriate counterfactual for the other.

What the data cannot answer

Attendance, course completion, discipline, staffing turnover and student mobility are all possible lines of inquiry. They are unresourced in this analysis. The graduation file reports rates and cohort outcomes, not the events that produced them.

The shipped Minnesota artifact also lacks statewide graduation rows. This article therefore makes no statewide comparison, and its charts do not substitute a sum or average of district rows for an official state rate. The supported conclusion is narrower: Onamia's published graduation rate fell in four consecutive years, and its 2024 cohort recorded more non-graduates than graduates.

Rates, cohort counts and graduate counts come from the Minnesota Department of Education's graduation data. The analysis uses district rows for the classes of 2020 through 2024 and makes no statewide claim.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.