Summary:
Zip code 56009 covers Alden, Minnesota and is home to two high schools serving a combined 221 students: Alden-Conger Secondary, a comprehensive 7–12 school with 215 students, and Next Step West (Alden), a small 8–12 program with 6 students. Alden-Conger Secondary accounts for about 97% of the high school enrollment in this area, so any overall picture of “56009 high schools” is essentially a picture of that one school.
Alden-Conger Secondary, part of Alden-Conger Public School District, posts its strongest results in completion outcomes: a 96.9% graduation rate and a 0.0% dropout rate for 2024–2025, well above the state’s 84.9% and 4.2%. Academics are more mixed and have swung sharply — the school ranked 26th of 450 with 5 stars (94th percentile) in 2024–2025, then fell to 198th of 473 with 3 stars (58th percentile) in 2025–2026. In 2025–2026, all-grade scores were below the state in Math (39.6% vs 44.9%), Reading (37.9% vs 48.6%) and Science (22.4% vs 25.5%), but above the district in all three subjects. Grade-level results vary widely: the school beat the state in 11th grade Math, 8th grade Math and End of Course Science, while trailing in 7th grade Math, 10th grade Reading and 8th grade Science.
Next Step West (Alden), run by Southern MN Education Consortium, enrolls only 6 students and has a 6:1 student-teacher ratio, compared with 12.7 at Alden-Conger Secondary. The data set includes no test, graduation, dropout or ranking information for it, and its free/reduced lunch figure is simply not reported, so it cannot be academically compared with Alden-Conger Secondary — only described as a very small program.
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