Summary:
ZIP code 55016 in Cottage Grove, Minnesota is home to six elementary schools — all part of South Washington County Schools — serving grades K–5, with four of them also offering prekindergarten, and together enrolling about 2,898 students. The district as a whole ranks 144th of 458 Minnesota districts (69th percentile, 3 stars), but performance inside this ZIP code varies widely from building to building, so which school a child attends matters a great deal.
Three schools stand out. Cottage Grove Elementary is the academic leader: 4 stars, 194th of 869 elementary schools statewide, and the group's best Math (69.3%) and Reading (58.3%), with strong results in every grade level. Grey Cloud Elementary is the largest school, with 797 students, and performs above both district and state in Math (57.0%), Reading (55.5%), and Science (28.2%, the highest in the group). Armstrong Elementary is the most improved, climbing from 480th to 340th statewide, with Reading up about 13 points (to 53.3%) and Science up about 16 points (to 20.4%).
Elsewhere the picture is mixed. Pine Hill Elementary and Crestview Elementary are both 2-star schools that fall below the state in Reading and Science, though Crestview's Math rose to 48.6% and Pine Hill's 3rd grade Math is 60.6% even as its 5th grade Math drops to 29.8%. Hillside Elementary is 2 stars with solid Science (27.5%) but Reading below both benchmarks, and its statewide rank has slipped over three years. Across the group, Math is the strongest subject and Science the weakest, and neither free/reduced lunch rates nor smaller class sizes reliably predict how a school performs.
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