Summary:
Verndale Public School District in Minnesota contains just one high school, Verndale Secondary, which serves grades 7–12 and enrolls 231 students at 411 SW Brown St in Verndale. Because it is the district's only high school, this school's results are the district's high-school results, and there is no second school in the area to compare against. Nearly half of the student body — 46.75% — is eligible for free or reduced lunch, and the student/teacher ratio is a relatively low 11.9.
Academically, the school trails both the district and the state in every subject tested in 2025–26. All-grades Math proficiency was 14%, compared with 44.9% statewide — a gap of 30.9 percentage points — and marked a decline from 17.58% the year before. Reading is the relative bright spot at 29.8%, though still about 18.8 points below the state, and grade-level Reading was consistent across 7th, 8th, and 10th grades (roughly 29–30%). Science is the weakest area by far: all-grades proficiency was just 5.6% versus 25.5% statewide, with 8th-grade Science at 3.1% and End-of-Course Science at 7.7%. The school's ranking has also slid steadily, from 43rd percentile and 2 stars in 2023–24 to 34th percentile and 2 stars in 2024–25, down to 16th percentile and 1 star in 2025–26.
There is a clear positive: the graduation rate of 91.4% in 2024–25 is 6.5 percentage points above the state's 84.9%. However, the dropout rate of 5.7% is also above the state's 4.2%, so the completion picture is mixed. Overall, families should know that Verndale Secondary combines strong graduation outcomes and small class sizes with significant academic challenges, particularly in Science and Math, and a ranking trend that has moved downward over the past three years.
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