Summary:
ZIP code 55902, in Rochester, Minnesota, contains three high schools serving grades 6 through 12: Rochester Math & Science Secondary (grades 7–12, 230 students), Rochester Beacon Academy (grades 6–12, 115 students), and Project Search Mayo Clinic (grade 12 only, 8 students), for a combined enrollment of about 353 students.
The two larger schools look very different. Rochester Math & Science Secondary, part of Rochester Math and Science Academy, posts all-grade math proficiency of 48.5% (above the state's 44.9%), 8th grade math of 58.1%, a 100.0% graduation rate, and a 0.0% dropout rate, versus a state graduation rate of 84.9%. Its science results are the striking exception: all-grade science, End-of-Course science, and 8th grade science are each reported at 0%, far below the state's 25.5% and 35.0%. At Rochester Beacon Academy, part of Rochester Beacon Academy, all-grade science is 25.8%, just above the state's 25.5%, and 8th grade reading is 60.0%. But all-grade math is 14.0%, all-grade reading is 31.1%, and the graduation rate is 60.0%.
Project Search Mayo Clinic belongs to Rochester Public School District, the highest-ranked of the three districts at 227/458, 50th percentile, 3 stars, but no school-level test, graduation, dropout, lunch, or student-teacher ratio data is provided for it here, so it cannot be compared on performance. Note also that Beacon's 6th grade math, 6th grade reading, and 8th grade science are suppressed and should be treated as unknown, not as zero. Math & Science serves a much higher free/reduced lunch share (88.26%) with a student-teacher ratio of 16.4, versus Beacon's 43.48% and 11.2, yet it outperforms in math, reading, and graduation — so class size alone does not explain the differences.
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