Oregon’s chronic absenteeism rate, found to be one of the worst in the nation, got even worse last school year, new state figures show.
Oregon defines chronic absenteeism as missing 11 percent or more of the school year.
Four years ago, 15 percent of Oregon students missed that much school. By 2015-16, it was 19 percent. Last year it worsened still, to 20 percent, the state said in a report released Thursday.
Missing too much school is one of the primary factors that cause students to fail to learn to read well and, moreso, to leave high school without a diploma. That’s not surprising: It is hard to pass your classes in high school when you’re not in class.
Last year, 28 percent of Oregon high school students missed at least 11 percent of the school year, or roughly three and a half weeks of school, the new figures show. So did 21 percent of kindergartners.
The Oregonian/OregonLive first called public attention to Oregon’s sky-high rates of chronic absenteeism, and the risks that poses to students and the state’s economy, in a February 2014 series by The Oregonian/OregonLive, “Empty Desks.”
There is no doubt that Oregon’s rampant school absenteeism is a prime contributor to the state’s terrible graduation rate, which was 75 percent for the class of 2016. It was pegged at third-worst in the nation for the most recent year for which the U.S. Department of Education has provided state-by-state rates, the class of 2015.
In June 2016, Gov. Kate Brown hand-picked the state’s inaugural “education innovation officer,” She gave Colt Gill, formerly superintendent of the Bethel school district near Eugene, a singular mission: lower Oregon’s dropout rate.
Gill said reducing absenteeism would be a primary strategy. But so far that hasn’t happened on his watch. More than 108,000 students missed that much school last year, up from 102,000 the year before. He said he was “distressed” to see the trend of worsening absenteeism had continued.
Gill and his backers say it was bound to take him more than one year, however, to translate his work into more regular school attendance statewide. “We needed the funding” first, he explained.
He spent his first five months on the job learning and listening before unveiling a plan jointly developed by his office and the Oregon Department of Education, he said. He then took that to the Legislature, which voted in July to back it with $7.8 million.
Those efforts will begin to roll out this school year, he said. The first and most intensive part of the plan — providing coaching and technical assistance to the 20 districts with the most severe absenteeism problems — should launch by December, after the 20 or so coaches get hired. The districts they will serve have yet to be identified, he said.
Absenteeism is more highly concentrated in parts of rural Oregon than in medium and small cities.
Apart from alternative high schools, most of which have atrocious attendance rates, the worst problems were recorded in the Union district of rural Northeast Oregon (47 percent of students chronically absent), the Mitchell school district in rural Central Oregon (44 percent) and the rural North Lake district 75 miles south of Bend (37 percent).
Among districts with at least 5,000 students, the worst offenders were Redmond (29 percent chronically absent), Lincoln County (also 29 percent) and Salem-Keizer (28 percent.)
In the Portland area, the worst problems were in three districts east of I-205 in Multnomah County: Centennial (26 percent chronically absent), Reynolds (also 26 percent) and Parkrose (25 percent).
Students in poverty are much more prone than better off students to miss too much school. But some districts stood out for promoting strong school attendance among low-income children and teens. They included Dallas (just 11 percent of low-income students chronically absent), McMinnville (15 percent) and Hillsboro (19 percent). McMinnville is an example of a district that gets exceptional results, in part due to excellent attendance. So are Alice Ott and Ron Russell middle schools in the David Douglas district of east Portland, both of which produced state-champion-level results on state reading, writing and math exams.
Some districts that generally serve a fairly advantaged student body, by contrast, had terribly high absenteeism rates among their economically disadvantage students, state figures show. Those include West Linn-Wilsonville (31 percent of low-income students chronically absent), Eugene (29 percent) and Bend-La Pine (28 percent). In Portland Public Schools, the state’s largest district, that rate was 24 percent.
Gill said the second stage of his plan to combat chronic absenteeism will roll out later in the school year. His office and the Oregon Department of Education will arrange for regional education agencies or coalitions to lead training and other systems of support to help local schools and districts create more welcoming environments and better respond to students at high risk of missing too much school.
The third and final stage of his $7.4 million plan, he said, is a statewide publicity campaign designed to persuade Oregonians that getting all children to attend school regularly is a high priority and one all community members, not just parents and teachers, can contribute to.
