Summary:
ZIP code 56164 covers Pipestone, Minnesota, where 5 schools serve 1,191 students in grades PK through 12, split between the Pipestone Area School District (3 schools, 1,126 students — 94.5% of enrollment) and the Region 6 and 8-SW/Wc Service Coop (2 alternative and specialized schools, 65 students).
Among the three traditional district schools, Pipestone Elementary is the strongest academically and the largest, with 580 students. Its 2025–2026 all-grade proficiency is 37.9% in math, 41.8% in reading, and 16.7% in science — above district averages (24.9%, 33.8%, 13.1%) but below state averages (44.9%, 48.6%, 25.5%). Its 4th-grade reading proficiency of 48.8% exactly matches the state. Pipestone Middle faces the deepest challenges: 14.6% math and 30.1% reading all-grade, and 8th-grade science proficiency of 3% versus district 2.9% and state 16.7%. Pipestone Senior High has a mixed profile — graduation rate of 92.0% above the state’s 84.9%, but a dropout rate of 6.6% above the state’s 4.2%, low math at 16.4%, and reading that fell from 39.47% to 19% in one year.
The two alternative schools operate at a very different scale. SWWC Alternative Learning Center - Pipestone enrolls 39 students, reports 0% science proficiency, yet has a 90.9% graduation rate and 0.0% dropout rate, with the ZIP’s highest student-teacher ratio at 19.2. SWWC ELC - Pipestone has just 26 students, a 3.5 student-teacher ratio, the highest free/reduced-lunch rate at 61.54%, and reading proficiency of 20%. Many of their test results are suppressed by the state, so those figures should be read as unknown rather than zero. Rank trends across the district are mostly negative: Pipestone Elementary slipped from the 46th to the 30th percentile, Senior High from 29 to 19, and Middle from 29 to 16.
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