Summary:
ZIP code 55104 in Saint Paul is home to 14 schools — seven elementary, two middle, and five high schools enrolling roughly 4,425 students combined — split between Saint Paul Public Schools and a mix of charter and single-school districts including Higher Ground Academy, The Journey School, and Gateway STEM Academy. The ZIP is dominated by one school: Central Senior High enrolls 1,682 students, about 38 percent of all students here and roughly three-quarters of high schoolers.
The area is sharply divided rather than uniformly weak. Central Senior High ranks in the 87th percentile and beats the state average in math (46.2 vs. 44.9), reading (55.4 vs. 48.6), and science (43.2 vs. 25.5), with an 89.9 percent graduation rate — even though its own district ranks in the 24th percentile statewide. It also improved fast, climbing from the 64th to the 87th percentile in a year. Two other schools beat the state somewhere: HGA Elementary posts a math score of 49.5 percent despite the ZIP's highest poverty rate, and Barack & Michelle Obama Montessori beats the state in science while improving steadily for three years. At the other end, Four Seasons Elementary sits in the 1st percentile with 0 percent science proficiency, and The Journey School and Gateway STEM Academy also rank at the bottom.
Three patterns matter most for families. Science is the ZIP's systemic weakness — only two schools clear the state bar. The high school tier is where the crisis concentrates: apart from Central, graduation rates run 32–52 percent against a state figure of 84.9 percent, with High School For Recording Arts graduating 34.2 percent. Finally, the smallest schools — Gordon Parks High School, A. G. A. P. E. Teen Parent, and The Journey School Middle — have several state-suppressed values, which should be read as unknown rather than as failure, and their percentages swing widely with a single student.
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