Summary:
ZIP code 55301 covers Albertville and Otsego in the northwest Twin Cities area and contains two middle schools serving slightly different grade ranges: St. Michael-Albertville Middle West (grades 5–8, 1,076 students) in the St. Michael-Albertville Schools district, and Kaleidoscope Middle School (grades 6–8, 117 students) in the Kaleidoscope Charter School district. Because one school includes fifth grade and the other does not, the all-grade averages blend slightly different student groups, so grade-by-grade comparisons are the fairest.
St. Michael-Albertville Middle West is the higher-performing of the two and one of the strongest middle schools in Minnesota. It ranks 45th of 546 middle schools statewide (92nd percentile, 5 stars) and its district ranks 28th of 458 (94th percentile), and it has held a top-50 statewide rank for three straight years. Proficiency is well above the state: math 56.3% vs 44.9% and reading 63.0% vs 48.6%, while science essentially matches the state (25.4% vs 25.5%). Its highest results are 8th grade math and reading at 70% each and 6th grade reading at 71.9%.
Kaleidoscope Middle School is much smaller but clearly improving, moving from 265th to 219th of 546 statewide (60th percentile, 3 stars) in two years. Reading (53.6%) and science (29.7%) both beat the state averages of 48.6% and 25.5%, and its 8th grade science score of 29.7% tops both the state’s 16.7% and St. Michael-Albertville Middle West’s 19.6%. Math is the weak spot: 24.0% overall vs the state’s 44.9%, with 6th grade at 9.5% and 7th grade at 19.6%, though 8th grade math (45.9%) is above the state’s 42.3%. Its free/reduced-lunch rate is 31.62% vs 17.57% at St. Michael-Albertville Middle West. One caution: the reported student-teacher ratio of 93.6 at Kaleidoscope versus 21.3 at St. Michael-Albertville Middle West looks like a reporting anomaly and is worth verifying.
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