Summary:
ZIP code 56164 contains a single middle school: Pipestone Middle in Pipestone, Minnesota. It serves grades 6–8, enrolls 244 students, and belongs to the Pipestone Area School District. Because it is the only middle school in the area, there is no side-by-side local comparison to make — the most useful comparison is between this school and its district and state averages.
Pipestone Middle trails both its district and Minnesota in every subject. In 2025–2026, math proficiency was 14.6%, compared with 24.9% in the district and 44.9% statewide, a gap of 30.3 percentage points to the state. Reading was the school's strongest subject at 30.1%, though still below the district (33.8%) and state (48.6%). Science was the clearest weakness at only 3.0% proficient, versus 13.1% in the district and 25.5% statewide. Year over year, reading edged up slightly (29.79% to 30.1%), while math fell from 16.17% to 14.6% and science dropped from 6.9% to 3.0%.
Grade-level results show lower proficiency in the upper grades: math was 20.2% in 6th grade, 12.0% in 7th, and 10.4% in 8th; reading was 42.9%, 25.3%, and 19.4%. Eighth-grade science was 3.0%. These are different grade cohorts, not the same students tracked over time. The school's state rank percentile fell from 29 in 2023–2024 to 16 in both 2024–2025 and 2025–2026, holding a 1-star rating each year, while the district ranks 378th of 458 in Minnesota. For context, 40.98% of students received free or reduced lunch in 2024–2025, and the student-teacher ratio was 14.2.
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