Bertha Secondary

Bertha Secondary is a 7–12 school serving 213 students in Bertha, MN, a small central Minnesota community where the nearest comparable high schools sit 9–15 miles away in four different districts. The school just posted the strongest year in its decade of available data: 128th of 473 Minnesota schools (73rd percentile, 4 stars) in 2025-26, a sharp jump from a prior nine-year range of 31st–53rd percentile. It currently outranks its own Bertha-Hewitt Public School District, which sits at 175th of 458 districts (62nd percentile, 3 stars). Every reported student subgroup improved year over year, and the low-income subgroup ranked in the 91st percentile with 5 stars — an unusual result for a school where about 45% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

Test scores tell a more mixed story. Science is the only subject where Bertha Secondary exceeds the state average, and its two strongest results — 10th-grade reading (7.5 points above state) and the science End-of-Course exam (+7.9) — both come from older students. Math is the clearest weak spot at 28.7% proficiency versus the state's 44.9%, a 16.2-point gap that is the largest in the comparison set. Notably, the math gap narrows as students move up: 14.5 points below state in 7th grade, 11 in 8th grade, but only 5.9 in 11th grade. Nearby Parkers Prairie Secondary outperforms Bertha in math and science, while Verndale Secondary posts far lower results (14.0% math, 5.6% science) despite serving a nearly identical poverty level.

Where Bertha is most consistent is completion: graduation has topped the state average in all five years shown (about 91.7% on average) and the dropout rate has been below the state in four of five. That holds up against a higher-poverty student body than Staples-Motley Senior High, and stands out next to Wadena-Deer Creek Senior High, a larger school that graduated 80.2% with a 9.8% dropout rate. Two cautions for parents: at 213 students, year-to-year swings are large, so one strong year is a signal rather than a verdict, and math remains the clearest priority area in the data. Scores for White Pine Academy are suppressed by the state and are unknown — not zero.