Despite COVID impacts, Oregon’s graduation rate edges slightly above pre-pandemic record

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Oregon’s graduation rate is making moves in the right direction.. Read more here.

Oregon’s graduation rate for the class of 2021 edged slightly above its 2019 level, buoyed by large gains among Black students and students with disabilities.

The new statewide rate of 81% represents a gain of 3 percentage points from four years ago as well as a gain of about half a percentage point from when Oregon last handed out pre-pandemic diplomas, in 2019.

However, it also marks a decrease of 2 percentage points from 2020, when the state loosened grading standards as an early pandemic response. Likely as a result, graduation rates surged among nearly all student groups, particularly those that traditionally struggled to earn diplomas. Some observers view those elevated rates as an anomaly that reflected the state’s edict that no student who had a passing grade early in the semester could be issued a failing grade, even if they did not do more work and passed no more tests or quizzes.

State schools chief Colt Gill was upbeat that more than 37,000 of Oregon’s roughly 46,300 students in the class of 2021 earned diplomas within four years, given that they were sent home with almost no warning in March of their junior year as COVID struck and most spent their senior year primarily in online learning as well.

“To me, this is a graduation rate that we need to celebrate,” he told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “The additional work that our students put in, that our educators put in, that our families put in as sometimes the at-home teacher for our students is incredible,” he said.

Still, he said, students of color and others whom schools have historically struggled to usher to diplomas need to be watched carefully and given extra support. The same is true, he said, for current students whose trajectory through high school or middle school also was affected by school closures and limited hours of online instruction during the ongoing pandemic.

“We need to appreciate that and continue to work to move back to a system that is fully supportive to all students on their pathway,” he said. He cautioned that educators must “pay particular attention to our students who are coming up through the system now and the impacts of the pandemic on them and make sure that we meet their needs.”

For many years, Oregon has ranked in the national basement when it comes to graduating students within four years of starting high school. The most recent national comparison, from 2019, showed that Oregon ranked No. 48, ahead of only Arizona and New Mexico.

Statewide, Oregon’s graduation rate among Black students rose to 73%, up from 70% in 2019, and the rate for students with disabilities reached 66%, up from 63%. Many students with disabilities graduate in five years rather than four, state figures show.

Districts with significant Black student enrollments that posted the best graduation rates this year included Hillsboro (93%), Beaverton (89%) and North Clackamas (87%). For Latino students, the greatest success stories were in McMinnville (93%), Hermiston (90%) and North Clackamas (88%).

— Betsy Hammond; betsyhammond@oregonian.com

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