Original Research by School Decision on Prairie Du Chien Correctional Inst
Prairie du Chien Correctional Inst, as its name makes clear, is not a neighborhood school. It is an alternative school within the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, serving grade twelve exclusively. The student body is very small. Its racial and ethnic composition includes students who are Black and students who are Hispanic. Information on the share of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch is not available, and neither is data on students with disabilities or English learners.
Because this is a correctional-instruction setting with a single grade, some of the usual measures do not apply in the same way they would for a conventional high school. State assessment results, a graduation rate, and chronic absenteeism data were all absent. That is typical for a school of this type and grade span, but a reader should understand that the academic-performance picture that families commonly compare from school to school simply cannot be drawn from the available record. There is no program offerings list and no staffing data.
The school is part of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections rather than a traditional school district, so it sits outside the usual county-district comparisons. The available comparison framework for districts in Crawford County flagged all of its standard metrics, such as overall proficiency and four-year graduation rate, as not applicable. That is consistent with the nature of the institution.
The city of Prairie du Chien is a small historic river city that serves as the Crawford County seat and the commercial hub for a wide rural area. The economy includes manufacturing, retail, tourism, and government employment. Major employers include 3M and Cabela's, along with the county courthouse and a state penitentiary. The city has a compact layout near the confluence of the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers, with a historic downtown and riverfront park on St. Feriole Island. It is a tourist destination with several National Historic Landmarks. Housing values in the city's zip code are noticeably lower than the Wisconsin state benchmark, which reflects the general cost of living in this part of the state.
For a parent or guardian looking at this school, the essential context is that it serves students in a correctional setting for a single year of high school. The typical tools for evaluating a school, from test scores to graduation rates to extracurricular offerings, were not available. The institution exists to provide educational services within the corrections system, not as a choice option in the open market. Families considering this placement would be dealing directly with the Department of Corrections and would need to get their information from that agency, as the public data record offers very little by way of academic or environmental detail.
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