Compiled from official source data by PlainSchools.
13 public K-12 schools in Cottage Grove from NCES Common Core of Data: enrollment, grade span, demographics, and Civil Rights Data Collection statistics for every active campus.
According to NCES CCD 2024-25, Cottage Grove has more public-school enrollment than 72% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Cottage Grove sits in the broad middle of the national city distribution rather than at a single obvious extreme. Its scale, average Resource Investment Index, and staffing position need to be read together: a middle placement on one measure does not cancel a stronger or weaker result on another. The percentile panel makes those dimensions explicit, and the school table shows where the city aggregate breaks into materially different campus profiles.
A full K–12 ladder sits inside the city boundary
Cottage Grove's list includes 3 elementary, 2 middle, and 4 high-school campuses, plus 4 combined-grade records. The city average spans every major grade stage, so the ranked table is more informative when read within level than as one interchangeable queue.
The composite and staffing measures point in different directions
Cottage Grove's average Resource Investment Index sits at the 60th percentile, while its teacher-staffing measure sits at the 1st percentile. The 59-point percentile gap is a reminder that the index is not a class-size score: counselors, gifted-program reporting, and attendance also affect it. Compare those components directly when two schools have similar index totals; the same headline score can arise from a different mix of reported resources.
City enrollment
Top 28%
School count
Top 28%
Resource Index average
60th percentile
Teacher staffing
1st percentile
Park High School accounts for 26.1% of all Cottage Grove public-school enrollment
That concentration means Cottage Grove-wide averages can mask substantial variation outside the largest entity. Grade level: High. The share measures enrollment concentration only; it does not establish how districts allocate programs, capital, or staff. Enrollment-weighted aggregates give this entity more weight than any smaller peer, while an unweighted entity average treats every record equally.
Cottage Grove school enrollment varies 285× across entities
Cottage Grove school enrollment ranges from 7 students (lowest) to 1,992 students (highest), a spread of 1,985 students. That ratio is an extreme outlier spread — among the widest gaps observed anywhere in this dataset. Per-school staffing and program breadth can differ sharply at opposite ends of that enrollment range, so the city average should not be treated as a typical campus.
Cottage Grove operates one school district — a single-district system
Cottage Grove's listed schools share one district boundary, budget authority, and reporting chain. That makes citywide and districtwide governance easier to compare, but it does not make individual campuses uniform: grade configuration, staffing, programs, and student need can still vary materially within the same school district.
Cottage Grove student-teacher ratio is 25.9:1 — well above typical (typically associated with unusually large scale or acute resource constraints)
student-teacher ratio is the simplest comparative metric but it does not capture the full picture: the ratio counts FTE classroom teachers against total enrollment, push-in specialists, English-language aides, special-education co-teachers, and counselors are not included in most reporting Values this far above typical often signal acute resource constraints or a structurally different scale than most peers — worth reading alongside the underlying counts, not the ratio alone.
Most racially and ethnically mixed schools in Cottage Grove
Ranked by the Simpson student-body diversity index (0-100) from NCES race and ethnicity data, where higher means a more evenly mixed student body. It measures mix, not quality.
What do families ask about schools in Cottage Grove?
Which Cottage Grove school has the highest Resource Investment Index? ▼
Pine Hill Elementary has the highest Resource Investment Index among the Cottage Grove schools in this federal-data comparison at 63/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
How many schools are in Cottage Grove, MN? ▼
Cottage Grove has 13 public schools with a total enrollment of 7,632 students. Average student-teacher ratio: 25.9:1.
Data from NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) 2024-25 and Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) 2021-22. The Resource Investment Index uses reported student-teacher ratio,
counselor access, gifted programs, and attendance; it is not an academic rating. Cities must include at least five schools to be listed. This public-data comparison is for informational purposes:
verify current enrollment, attendance boundaries, and programs with the school district before acting. See the guide to understanding NCES data.
