Summary:
ZIP code 56187 in Worthington, Minnesota is home to three elementary schools, all part of the Worthington Public School District: Intermediate School (grades 3–5, 705 students), Prairie Elementary (grades PK–2, 690 students), and Virtual Instruction by Excellence E (grades K–6, 518 students), for a total of 1,913 students. The two brick-and-mortar schools together cover PK–5, while the virtual school spans K–6 and overlaps those grades. The district is ranked 372 of 458 in Minnesota, at the 19th percentile with a 1-star rating.
Virtual Instruction by Excellence E is the academic standout but also the most volatile. It ranked in the 80th percentile in 2023–2024 and the 89th percentile in 2024–2025, then dropped to the 44th percentile in 2025–2026, when reading was 52.8% and math 36.1% — still above the district in both. Its grade 3 results were strong (75% reading, 66.7% math), while grade 4 was weaker (30.8% reading, 23.1% math), and grades 5–6 results were suppressed. Intermediate School has stayed in the 18th–19th percentile with 1 star for three straight years, posting 30.5% math, 33.2% reading, and 16.5% science — below state but slightly above district in math and science. Prairie Elementary serves PK–2 and has no test-score data here; its older rank history was 15th–18th percentile.
Economic need differs sharply: free/reduced lunch is 37.45% at Virtual Instruction by Excellence E, versus 70.35% at Intermediate School and 73.19% at Prairie Elementary. Student/teacher ratios are 49.8, 13.9, and 11.8 respectively; the virtual school's figure is an extreme outlier that may not compare directly with traditional class sizes.
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