Summary:
ZIP code 56431 in Aitkin, Minnesota contains just one high school: Aitkin Secondary School, which serves grades 7 through 12 and enrolls 509 students as part of the Aitkin Public School District. Because there are no other high schools in this ZIP code, there is no local peer to compare against — the most useful benchmarks are the district, the state of Minnesota, and the school's own prior-year results. Contextually, 41.26% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch and the student-teacher ratio is 13.5.
By state standards, this school is a standout. It ranked 30th out of 473 schools in 2025–2026, placing it in the 94th percentile with 5 stars — a big jump from 2023–2024, when it ranked 176th out of 480 in the 63rd percentile with 3 stars. In 2025–2026, all-grade proficiency was 63% in Math, 55.1% in Reading, and 42.2% in Science, beating the state in every subject, with the largest margins in Math (+18.1 percentage points) and Science (+16.7 points). Proficiency rose in all three subjects from the prior year, with Science gaining 11.92 points. Grade-level results show particular strength in 8th-grade Math (76.5% vs. the state's 42.3%) and Science End-of-Course (56.5% vs. 35%).
Graduation is strong at 89.8%, above both the district (84.2%) and the state (84.9%). The main concern is the dropout rate of 8.9%, which is slightly below the district's 9.4% but more than double Minnesota's 4.2%. Reading is above the state but trails the district (55.1% vs. 57.2%), making it the relative weak spot. Overall, families are looking at a rapidly improving, high-performing school whose biggest remaining challenge is keeping students through graduation.
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