Summary:
Discovery Middle School is the only middle school serving grades 6–8 in the Alexandria Public School District, enrolling 898 students with a 4-star rating in a district that also holds 4 stars.
Because it is the district's only middle school, all comparisons are to district and state averages rather than to peer schools nearby. Discovery ranks 74th of 546 Minnesota middle schools in 2025–2026, placing it in the 86th percentile — roughly the top 14% statewide. Reading is the standout: all-grade proficiency is 57.7%, which is 2.4 points above the district and 9.1 points above the state, with 6th grade at 62.5% and 8th grade at 61.8%. Math is also strong at 51.3% overall, 6.4 points above the state, and every grade level beats the state average — 6th grade by 13.3 points, 7th by 4.2, and 8th by 14.5. Science is the clear exception: the all-grade figure of 19.9% trails both the district's 31.1% and the state's 25.5%, though the more precise 8th-grade science score of 19.9% is slightly above the district's 19.6% and the state's 16.7%.
Discovery's trajectory is encouraging. Its statewide rank has climbed steadily from 119th of 545, to 100th of 519, to 74th of 546 — a 45-position gain and an 8-point percentile increase over two years — while holding a 4-star rating each year. Year over year, reading gained 4.62 points and math dipped only slightly by 0.39 points, but science fell 7.13 points, the one area worth watching closely. Context figures for 2024–2025 show a free/reduced lunch rate of 28.06% and a student-teacher ratio of 15.8, indicating a relatively large school with moderate economic need, though no state comparison for those numbers is provided.
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