Oregon schools raised the statewide graduation rate for the class of 2019 to 80%, slightly narrowed racial and economic inequities and registered improvement with every single group of students, according to figures made public early Thursday.
The biggest gains were among low-income students, whose on-time graduation rate rose 2 percentage points; students with disabilities, whose rate rose 3 percentage points; and students who were still learning English as their second language while in high school. The on-time graduation rate for that third group surged more than 4 percentage points to 60%.
.Betsy Hammond / The Oregonian|OregonLive
State schools chief Colt Gill hailed what he called an “historic” achievement. He credited hard work in local school districts as well as a half-dozen statewide initiatives for the widespread improvement and the narrowing of racial and other gaps.
In particular, Gill said, the state is seeing the payoff from new programs designed to help specific groups of students -- Native Americans, blacks, English language learners and migrants -- in ways that respect their cultures, match their languages and use research-backed techniques. For example, 18 full-time bilingual “graduation specialists” placed strategically around the state mentor migrant students and help their parents -- in their native language -- to understand such matters as what credits are and how many are needed to graduate.
Gill said the Oregon Department of Education has also helped by shining a light, year after year, on key indicators of students’ progress, particularly the share of ninth-graders who earn enough credits to be on track toward graduation and the percentage of students in every grade who are absent more than 10% of the school year. Missing too much school or failing too many classes freshman year are highly correlated with dropping out of school.
It was former Gov. John Kitzhaber’s overarching education board that first required schools to track -- and the state to make public -- those two rates. That board and its “achievement compacts” with school boards were widely criticized, particularly by school boards, school administrators and the teachers union. After Kitzhaber resigned amid an influence peddling scandal, lawmakers, with the support of Gov. Kate Brown, were quick to abolish the so-called Oregon Education Investment Board and its accountability powers.
But the Oregon Department of Education, under Gill and his predecessors, kept collecting and publicizing the new data points the board had zeroed in on. And Gill, appointed to the post by Brown in January 2018, has upped the pressure and encouragement for schools and districts to combat rampant absenteeism.
The Kitzhaber-backed requirement to closely track how many ninth-graders earn enough credits kicked in for freshmen in 2013-14. The numbers were discouraging: just 78.5%, the state reported. But just two years later, when the class of 2019 hit ninth-grade, schools had upped their game, and 83.5% of them netted the necessary credits to be on track for a diploma. In that way, Thursday’s encouraging report was somewhat foretold by their ninth-grade successes.
Schools with exceptionally high graduation rates included West Linn High (99%), West Albany High (98%), Henley High in Klamath County (also 98%), Sherwood High (97%) and Lakeridge High (96%).
Schools with exceptional graduation rates for low-income students, who face extra challenges and need more expert support from educators to reach a diploma in four years, included West Albany (more than 95%), McMinnville High (93%), and Benson, Madras, Marshfield (in Coos Bay) and Clackamas high schools, all of which graduated 91% of their low-income students on time.
The state also tracks how many students graduate within five years of starting high school, in recognition that some students -- particularly those who move around a lot or who start high school barely speaking English -- need extra time to gain all the required credits. That five-year rate for the class of 2018 rose 2 percentage points from the class of 2017 rate to reach 82%.
Oregon’s graduation rate has been considered an embarrassment and blemish for many years, with it typically ranking in the very bottom tier of states. It won’t be known for many months how its new-and-improved rate ranks, given that other states are also registering improvements.
Latino success
This year’s graduation report caps a decade of improved school outcomes for Oregon’s large population of Latinos, who made up 22% of the class of 2019.
In each of the past five years, Latino students’ on-time graduation rate has climbed 2 percentage points or more so that it now stands just 5 percentage points below the rate for white students – 76% vs. 81%. A decade ago, that gap was 17 percentage points.
Black students, however, have not benefited as much. Their graduation rate, while up 2 percentage points this year, has stagnated in some recent years. At just 70%, the share of Oregon’s black students who earn a diploma in four years of high school is a full 10 percentage points below that for whites.
McMinnville schools continue to lead the way in graduating Latino students on time. More than 92% of students in its class of 2019 graduated on time, the best rate among districts with at least 100 Latino students. Woodburn was second, at 89%.
Those two districts showed more success at graduating Latino students than the following large Portland-area districts did at graduating white students: Portland, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Tigard-Tualatin, North Clackamas, Canby and Oregon City.
Two of Oregon’s three districts with the largest number of Latinos – Salem and Beaverton – roughly matched the state average for Latino graduation at 77% and 76% respectively, while the third, Portland Public Schools, lagged at 72%.
Three other districts with large Latino populations – Reynolds, Gresham-Barlow and Springfield – caused the statewide rate to drag, as they failed to get one-third or more of their Latino students across the line to a diploma in four years.
Over and over, McMinnville educators have shared the techniques they use to be so successful in getting Latino students to learn math, reading and writing skills, to gain college credits while in high school and to graduate on time – nearly all of them strategies designed to help all students, not just Latinos.
They use a variety of techniques. They offer free preschool, after-school help and summer school to students most in need of a boost. They also partner with community colleges to offer a huge variety of college-credit classes at McMinnville High, taught by the school’s teachers.
But three strategies do the most to explain McMinnville’s uncanny success at getting Latino students successfully through high school, said Tony Vicknair, the district’s secondary program administrator who served as the high school’s vice principal for about a decade before becoming principal in 2015.
Those are: The district’s highly effective program to help emerging bilingual students master English, McMinnville High’s extra-strong safety net program to ensure freshmen have a great start to high school and the school’s rich array of hands-on career-technical courses that let students see, starting freshman year, how what they learn in high school will connect to real life and rewarding jobs.
Sequences of hands-on classes that equip students with some of the skills they’ll need to become nurses, welders, firefighters, engineers or teachers are what motivate some students to come to school each day and to see a purpose in high school, Vicknair said.
“If you are excited about coming to school for welding or health services, you are going to come to school,” he said. “And if you come to school (with great regularity) all four years, you are going to graduate.”
-- Betsy Hammond; betsyhammond@oregonian.com; @chalkup
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