Summary:
Pipestone, Minnesota has five schools serving 1,191 students in grades PK through 12: one elementary, one middle, two high schools, and one alternative school. Enrollment splits between two systems — the Pipestone Area School District, with 1,126 students (about 94.5% of the city total), and the Region 6 and 8-SW/Wc Service Coop, whose two schools enroll 65 students combined. Pipestone Elementary alone accounts for 580 students, or 48.7% of all city enrollment, while SWWC ELC - Pipestone is the smallest at 26 students. In the data, “—” means the state suppressed a figure to protect student privacy, so those values are unknown rather than zero.
Among the district schools, Pipestone Elementary is the local academic leader, beating its district average in all three all-grade subjects in 2025–2026: math 37.9, reading 41.8, and science 16.7. It still trails Minnesota in each subject, and its rank percentile slipped from 46 to 30 over three years. Pipestone Senior High stands out for a 92.0 graduation rate — above the state's 84.9 — but its dropout rate is 6.6 versus the state's 4.2, and test scores are low, with reading falling from 39.47 to 19.0. Pipestone Middle posts the city's lowest science score, 3.0.
The two co-op schools look quite different. SWWC Alternative Learning Center - Pipestone, with 39 students, has a 90.9 graduation rate and a 0.0 dropout rate — better than the state — yet its test scores are suppressed or exact 0s, and it has the highest student-teacher ratio, 19.2. SWWC ELC - Pipestone, with 26 students, has the highest free/reduced lunch rate (61.54%) and the lowest ratio (3.5), and reported 20.0 in reading. Science is a weak spot citywide: every reported score was below the state's 25.5, and proficiency tends to drop as grade levels rise.
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