Exploration High School

Exploration High School is a single public high school serving grades 9–12 with 136 students in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and it also operates as its own district, Exploration High School.

Because it is the only school in the area, there are no other local schools to compare it against, so the most useful comparisons are to Minnesota state averages and to the school's own prior-year results. The school's strongest results are in completion: its graduation rate of 85.7% is slightly above the state's 84.9%, and its dropout rate of 2.0% is less than half the state's 4.2%. Test proficiency, however, is far below state levels in every subject for 2025–2026 — math at 11.5% versus 44.9% statewide, reading at 25% versus 48.6%, and science at 11.1% versus 25.5%. Statewide rankings reflect this: the district sits 404th of 458 districts, in the 12th percentile with 1 star, and its rank history slipped from 356th of 450 (21st percentile) in 2024–2025 to 405th of 473 (14th percentile) in 2025–2026.

Looking at year-over-year change, math improved from 7.14% to 11.5% but remains far below state proficiency, while reading fell from 40% to 25% and science dropped from 26.67% — slightly above the state's 26.15% — to 11.1%, a swing of about 15.6 percentage points. Note that the reading exam label changes from MCA-III to MCA-IV between these years, so that comparison should be read with caution. Context worth knowing: enrollment is small at 136 students, 47.79% qualify for free or reduced lunch, and the student-teacher ratio is 15.1. The overall picture is a school where students finish high school at a better-than-state rate even as test scores and rankings remain near the bottom.