Oregon school report card mixed, with enrollment drop continuing:
The Oregon Department of Education on Thursday released its annual statewide report card, providing a glimpse into the state’s public school system for the 2023-24 school year.
It shows that a dramatic decline in enrollment since the COVID-19 pandemic is continuing.
There were 539,813 students enrolled in the state’s public schools on Oct. 2, 2023. That’s 12,567 fewer than the previous year, and 7.2% fewer students than in 2018-19, before the pandemic.
I’m not sure anyone is surprised by this.
The data showed some gains:
The percentage of students who attended school regularly increased to 65.7%, which is 3.8% higher than 2022-23. This jump included a 6.7% increase for elementary school (K-5) students.
So about 35% of students don’t attend school regularly, and this is an improvement. Not sure how that’s not the headline.
And percentage of ninth-graders on-track to graduate from high school increased, by 1.2 percentage points, to 84.8%. That’s the second-highest rate ever recorded, just behind the pre-pandemic year of 2018-19. Graduation data is from the 2022-23 school year.
Graduation is now a next to meaningless statistic given that a wide swath of students can’t read, write, or do math—not that Oregon tests for that any more—but I guess the Oregon Department of Education needs to tout something.
“We must continue our focus on maintaining high expectations, providing opportunities for our students to succeed, and supporting our schools and educators,” [ODE director Charlene] Williams said.
This is the most unintentionally comedic quote of the day. Expectations could hardly be lower, and ODE almost couldn’t do more damage to public education if it tried. (To fair, the Democrats running things in Oregon for the past couple decades are the ultimate culprits.)