Summary:
ZIP code 53901 in Portage, Wisconsin contains three high schools serving roughly 630 students in grades 9–12: Portage High, Portage Academy of Achievement, and DOC: Columbia Correctional Institution (grades 11–12). Portage High enrolls 600 of those students — about 95% of all local high school enrollment — while Portage Academy of Achievement has 24 students and the DOC school has 6. The first two belong to the Portage Community School District; the DOC school is part of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections district.
Portage High is the strongest performer of the three. Its graduation rate is 97.8%, above the district's 94.9% and the state's 92.0%, and its dropout rate of 0.5% is below Wisconsin's 1.1%. Chronic absenteeism is 17.7%, close to the state figure of 17.3% and lower than the district's 20.4%. In 2025–26, its test scores were above the district average in all four subjects — Social Studies, English Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science — but below the state average in all four. Despite this, the district is ranked 244 of 432 statewide, at the 44th percentile with 2 stars, and Portage High has held at 2 stars while moving from the 35th percentile in 2023–24 to 48th in 2024–25 and 45th in 2025–26. It spends $16,973 per student with a 13.5:1 student-teacher ratio.
Portage Academy of Achievement shows a very different picture, with a 75.0% graduation rate and a 3.1% dropout rate — both well behind the district and state — yet it reports 0.0% chronic absenteeism and a 12.5% free/reduced-lunch rate, spending $13,005 per student at a 24:1 ratio. With only 24 students, a single student shifts these percentages by roughly four points, so results swing easily. The DOC: Columbia Correctional Institution school serves 6 students at a 2:1 ratio and reports no graduation, dropout, absenteeism, test-score, spending, or free/reduced-lunch data; it is a specialized correctional setting and should not be compared directly with the other two.
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