Summary:
The Pillager Public School District has one middle school, Pillager Middle School, serving grades 5–8 in Pillager, Minnesota, with 433 students, a 36.95% free/reduced lunch rate, and a 16.8 student-teacher ratio. Because it is the district’s only middle school, there are no other middle schools in the district to compare it with; the most useful comparisons are against district and Minnesota state averages. The school holds a 3-star rating, and its state percentile rank improved from 57th in 2023–2024 to 66th in 2024–2025 to 68th in 2025–2026, while the district ranks 146th of 458 districts, or the 68th percentile.
For parents, the clearest strength is reading. Across all grades, Pillager Middle School students were 53.4% proficient in reading, above the district’s 51.1% and the state’s 48.6%, and reading improved from 51.9% to 53.4% year over year. Seventh grade reading is especially strong at 54.2% versus 43.5% statewide, and 6th grade math stands out at 58.1% versus 39.5% statewide. Math overall is 42.8%, slightly below the state’s 44.9%, but it varies widely by grade: 6th grade math is far above state, while 8th grade math is 31.7%, below the state’s 42.3%.
The main concerns are science and 8th grade. Science is the weakest all-grade subject at 21.4% proficient, below the district’s 26.2% and the state’s 25.5%, and it declined from 25.7% in 2024–2025 to 21.4% in 2025–2026. Eighth grade is below the state in all three tested subjects: math 31.7% vs. 42.3%, reading 45.7% vs. 50.0%, and science 10.9% vs. 16.7%. By contrast, 5th grade science is above state at 31.4%. Overall, Pillager Middle School shows real strengths in reading and select grade-level results, but science and the 8th grade cohort are areas where parents may want to watch progress closely.
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