Summary:
ZIP code 55421 in Columbia Heights, Minnesota contains three middle schools serving grades 6–8 — Columbia Academy, Columbia Academy Anchor Program, and Prodeo Columbia Heights Middle — spanning two sectors, Columbia Heights Public School District and the charter network Prodeo Academy. Together they enroll about 1,016 students, but the split is lopsided: Columbia Academy has 719 students (roughly 71%), Prodeo Columbia Heights Middle has 291 (about 29%), and the Anchor Program has just 6 (0.6%).
On 2025‑26 state tests, both measured schools sit near the 10th percentile of Minnesota middle schools. Columbia Academy students are 22% proficient in reading and 11.6% in math; Prodeo Columbia Heights Middle is at 21.3% reading and 14.2% math. Science is the deepest weakness: 3.1% at Columbia Academy and 1.5% at Prodeo, compared with a state 8th-grade figure of 16.7%. Both schools read better than they compute. Grade-level results also point in opposite directions — Columbia Academy's proficiency rises from 6th to 8th grade, while Prodeo's falls, even though Prodeo starts with the stronger 6th-grade cohort (18.3% vs. 10% in math).
Class size and poverty rates differ: Prodeo reports 13.2 students per teacher and 89% free/reduced lunch, versus 17.2 and 78.7% at Columbia Academy. Both have ranked in the bottom decile for three straight years, and small rank shifts within that band are mostly noise. Prodeo's campus also trails its own network in math (14.2% vs. 30.4% district-wide), while Columbia Academy tracks its district closely. Finally, every test score and indicator for the six-student Anchor Program is suppressed for privacy — that means unknown, not zero.
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