Red Lake Secondary

Red Lake Secondary is the public high school serving grades 9–12 in Redlake, MN (56671), enrolling 377 students as the only traditional high school in the Red Lake Public School District. Its only same-district companion is Red Lake Alternative Learning, a 53-student alternative high school at the same address. About 82% of students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch in 2024-25, and that figure has held between roughly 82% and 90% for three years, making this one of Minnesota's most economically disadvantaged school communities.

Academically, the school has ranked in the bottom tenth of Minnesota for a decade, never rising above the 14th percentile and never earning more than one star. In 2025-26, 5.7% of students were proficient in math, 11.1% in reading, and 5.2% in science, compared with statewide rates of 44.9%, 48.6%, and 25.5%. Reading is the relative strength — about double the math rate — but it has fallen from 25.8% in 2022-23, while math has roughly tripled from about 2% to 5.7%, a gain of under 4 percentage points. Among student groups, special education students (18th percentile) and Native American students (14th percentile) rank highest relative to the state, though the Native American comparison pool is only 43 schools and those results swing from year to year.

The most severe gaps are in completion. In 2024-25, 23.6% of students graduated in four years versus 84.9% statewide, and the dropout rate was 39.4% against 4.2% statewide — roughly nine times the state rate. Graduation has fallen about 17 points over five years. Red Lake Secondary does outperform its own district (19.0% graduation), largely because the alternative program graduates 6.9% of its students; that program does post a lower dropout rate (27.5%), suggesting it keeps some students enrolled who might otherwise leave. Also worth watching: the student-teacher ratio jumped from 13.6 to 17.9 in a single year.