Summary:
Verndale Public School District is a small rural Minnesota district serving 484 students across two schools: Verndale Elementary (grades PK–6, enrollment 253) and Verndale Secondary (grades 7–12, enrollment 231). District-wide, it ranks 356 out of 458 Minnesota districts — the 22nd percentile with 1 star. It trails the state in all three tested subjects: math 31.2% vs. 44.9%, reading 42.8% vs. 48.6%, and science 9.7% vs. 25.5%. The two schools, however, are moving in opposite directions.
Verndale Elementary is the stronger school and is improving, rising from the 36th to the 47th percentile with 2 stars. Its reading proficiency of 51.6% beats the state's 48.6%, with standout results in 3rd-grade math (73.8% vs. 57.9%), 3rd-grade reading (57.1% vs. 46.8%), and 5th-grade reading (62.5% vs. 54.5%). Math (41.6%) is slightly below state, and science (18.8%) lags well behind. Verndale Secondary has fallen to the 16th percentile with 1 star, with math at 14.0% (about 31 points below state), reading at 29.8%, and science at 5.6%. Its bright spot is a 91.4% graduation rate, above the state's 84.9%, although the 5.7% dropout rate exceeds the state's 4.2%.
For families, the key comparison is the large gap between the schools: elementary students outperform secondary students by 27.6 points in math, 21.8 in reading, and 13.2 in science. Elementary math also slides sharply by grade — from 73.8% in 3rd grade to 17.9% in 6th — and results drop again across the 6th-to-7th grade transition, where reading falls from 53.8% to 30.0%. Science remains the district's weakest subject at every level, and secondary math is low in every reported grade. The district's low overall rank appears driven largely by secondary achievement, even as its graduation rate stays strong.
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