Summary:
Zip code 53516 in Blanchardville, Wisconsin is served by a single public high school, Pecatonica High, part of the Pecatonica Area School District. It is a small combined middle/high building serving grades 6 through 12 with about 198 students — roughly 28 per grade. Statewide, it ranks 126 of 533 ranked high schools, placing it at the 76th percentile with 4 stars, or the top quarter of Wisconsin high schools. That is a steep climb: three reported cycles ago the school sat at the 10th percentile with 1 star, so it has moved about 66 percentile points.
Testing is the school's strongest story. In 2025–2026, Pecatonica High beat the state on 11 of 12 measures, with particularly large margins in grades 6–8 — 8th-grade Social Studies at 86.67% versus the state's 64.63%, and 8th-grade Science at 76.67% versus 51.86%. Tenth-grade ACT results also beat the state in ELA, Math, and Science. The one clear weak spot is 10th-grade Social Studies, the only below-state result at 38.46% versus 48.25%, and it fell 11.5 points from the prior year. Meanwhile the school's overall average rose from 63.5 to 68.9 while the state stayed nearly flat, widening its advantage from about 12 points to about 17.
On accountability, the school looks steady: a 92.0% graduation rate matching the state exactly, a dropout rate of 0.5% versus the state's 1.1%, and chronic absenteeism of 15.4% versus 17.3%. About 32.32% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, per-student spending is $18,606, and the student-teacher ratio is a low 9.4 to 1 — a small, well-staffed building. Because each grade has so few students, single-year percentages can swing on just a handful of students, so the two-year direction is the more reliable signal. The priorities are clear: lift 10th-grade Social Studies and hold onto the gains already made.
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