Summary:
ZIP code 56001 is home to a single middle school, Prairie Winds Middle School, which serves grades 6–8 in Mankato, Minnesota as part of the Mankato Public School District. With 887 students, it is a relatively large middle school, working out to roughly 296 students per grade, and its 2024–2025 student-teacher ratio was 17.8. About 42.84% of students qualified for free or reduced lunch that year, indicating a meaningful share of economically disadvantaged families. Because it is the only middle school in the ZIP code, all comparisons here are against its own district and the state rather than against a neighboring school.
Prairie Winds is on a clear upward trajectory. Its state rank improved from 204th in 2023–2024 to 155th in 2024–2025 and 147th in 2025–2026, lifting it from the 63rd to the 73rd percentile and from 3 stars to 4 stars, where it has held. In 2025–2026, it ranked in the top 27% of ranked Minnesota schools. Math is its strongest subject relative to the state: 46.3% proficiency at the all-grade level versus 44.9% statewide, with 6th grade at 48.4% (state 39.5%) and 8th grade at 49.5% (state 42.3%). Reading is more mixed — 6th grade reached 54%, slightly above the state's 53.4%, but 7th grade (40.3%) and 8th grade (47.7%) fell below both the district and the state.
Science looks weak at 19.7% all-grade, but that figure matches the school's 8th grade result exactly, and against other 8th grade science scores Prairie Winds is above the state (16.7%) and nearly even with the district (20%). The clearest area for improvement is 7th grade, the lowest-performing grade in both Math (40.7%) and Reading (40.3%). Encouragingly, the school held steady in Math and improved slightly in Reading and Science year over year while district and state Reading and Science results declined.
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