Pipestone Middle

Pipestone Middle is a grades 6–8 middle school in Pipestone, Minnesota, serving 244 students as part of the Pipestone Area School District. It is the only school within 20 miles, so the most useful comparisons are to the district and the state. The school ranks 460th of 546 Minnesota middle schools — the 16th percentile with 1 star in 2025–2026 — after being at the 38th–42nd percentile with 2 stars around 2020–2022.

In 2025–2026, proficiency is below the district and well below the state in every subject. Math is 14.6% versus 44.9% statewide, reading is 30.1% versus 48.6%, and science is 3.0% versus 25.5%. The strongest grade-level result is 6th-grade reading at 42.9%, but 7th- and 8th-grade reading fall to 25.3% and 19.4%, and 8th-grade science is 3.0% compared with 16.7% statewide. Math drops from 20.2% in 6th grade to 12.0% in 7th and 10.4% in 8th. Over time, math improved from 2022–2023 to 2023–2024 but has declined for two straight years; reading has stayed low around 30%; and science has fallen sharply from 22.97% in 2023–2024 to 6.9% and then 3.0%.

Most student subgroups rank in the bottom fifth of the state. Female, male, Hispanic, White, and low-socioeconomic students are all in the bottom quintile, with White students at the 5th percentile and Hispanic students at the 9th. Special education students improved to the 34th percentile, still below average. The student–teacher ratio improved from 15.0 to 14.2, and free/reduced lunch fell from about 48.7% to 41.0%, but proficiency declined over the same period. The district itself ranks in the 17th percentile, so the school is not out of line with its district; the challenge appears system-wide. Because no nearby school data was provided, the clearest benchmarks remain the district and state, and by those measures the school is significantly below state averages and has lost ground.