Summary
Valley View Elementary is a PK–5 school at 351 E 88th St in Bloomington, Minnesota, serving 487 students as part of Bloomington Public Schools — the largest enrollment of the four Bloomington elementaries compared here. Its defining feature is long-standing, very low academic performance: in 2025-26, 7.1% of students met the math standard, 16.5% met reading, and 4.8% met science, against district figures of 39%, 42.3%, and 19.9%. Across ten years of records, Valley View has never risen above the 10th percentile statewide and earned 0 stars every year except 2015-16 (1 star). Its 2025-26 result, at the 3rd percentile, is the lowest in that record.
Valley View posts the lowest math and reading proficiency of any school in this comparison set. The next-lowest math score, at Indian Mounds Elementary, is 19.4% — nearly three times Valley View's. Hillcrest Elementary, about 2.2 miles away and with a nearly identical student-teacher ratio (14.3 vs. 14.5), reports 56.7% math, 59% reading, and 43.8% science. Valley View's economic need is high, at 83.4% free/reduced lunch, but that alone does not explain the gap: Success Academy Bloomington Elementary (92.3% free/reduced lunch) reaches 31.6% math, and Horizon Science Academy Twin Cities (100%) reaches 23.6% math and 37.5% reading. Class size and staffing look ordinary — the outcomes do not.
Performance also drops sharply as students move up: 3rd-grade math proficiency is 13.4%, falling to 6.9% in 4th grade and 1.2% in 5th, while reading stays roughly flat near 16–17% across those grades. Reading is the relative bright spot, though the bar is low. Results are low across every measured student group, with no group above the 19th percentile statewide in any of the last three years. Notably, the district overall sits near state averages, so the district picture does not reflect what families will find here.
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