High Schools in East Central School District

There are two high schools in the East Central School District, both serving grades 7–12 and both located in Finlayson, Minnesota: East Central Senior Secondary, with 309 students, and Crossroads Area Learning Center, with 32 students. Together they enroll 341 students, and East Central Senior Secondary accounts for about 90.6% of that total. District-wide, East Central School District is ranked 313 of 458 in Minnesota, at the 32nd percentile with 2 stars.

East Central Senior Secondary has clear momentum: it rose from the 25th percentile with 1 star in 2024–2025 to the 53rd percentile with 3 stars in 2025–2026 — a 28-percentage-point gain, though the number of ranked schools changed slightly. Science is its standout subject, with all-grade proficiency of 26.7% (above the district's 20.3% and the state's 25.5%) and end-of-course science at 37.7% (above district and state). All-grade science also jumped 16.36 percentage points in one year. Math and reading remain the gaps: all-grade math is 20.6%, below the district's 31.6% and the state's 44.9%, and all-grade reading is 29.7%, below the district's 35.2% and the state's 48.6%.

Crossroads Area Learning Center has a mixed profile. Its 2024–2025 graduation rate of 77.2% is above the district's 76.5% and above East Central Senior Secondary's 76.1%, though below the state's 84.9%. Its dropout rate of 13.6% is the highest among these schools, compared with 10.9% for the district, 9.5% for East Central Senior Secondary, and 4.2% statewide. It also serves a much higher free/reduced lunch population — 71.88% versus 37.54%. Most of its test scores are suppressed by the state, so its academic proficiency is unknown rather than zero, and no current-year rank is listed; its only rank data are very low results from 2018–2019, 2021–2022, and 2022–2023.