Portland school districts fall behind as enrollment rises across state

Oregon elementary, middle and high school students are starting to attend school more frequently. That’s good news for Oregon, a state whose high absenteeism rates consistently place it at the bottom of rankings nationwide.

Students in Oregon are considered regularly attending classes if they show up more than 90% of the days they are enrolled, and chronically absent if they do not attend classes. New Oregon Department of Education data for the 2023-24 school year shows 179,264 Oregon students were chronically absent, resulting in a statewide truancy rate of 34.3%.

This is an improvement from the 2022-23 school year, when 200,103 children were chronically absent. That year the rate was 38.1%, the lowest in a decade. (The national truancy rate in grades K–12 was 26% in 2022–23, according to the American Enterprise Institute.)

The state’s youth are among the fastest-growing demographic groups, with the proportion of regular primary school students rising to 70.9%, up 6.7% from the previous year.

Attendance levels are still nowhere near what they were before Oregon closed its schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the 2019-20 school year, 20.4% of students statewide were chronically absent.

But Oregon education leaders are optimistic. “We have promising numbers right now,” said ODE Director Charlene Williams, although she acknowledges there is still work to be done.

“While these achievements represent progress, they also remind us of the work ahead to meet the needs of every scientist,” Williams said in a webinar for reporters Tuesday.

While the state appears to be moving in the right direction, Portland school districts appear to be lagging behind. Portland Public Schools and the David Douglas and Parkrose school districts reported higher absenteeism rates than the state average.

PPS had 15,544 students chronically absent last year, accounting for 36.9% of the district’s rate. This is quite a significant difference from last year, when 15,595 students were absent. (There were more students attending PPS in 2022-23, so the absenteeism rate was slightly lower then at 36.4%).

One achievement for PPS? The kindergarten absenteeism rate dropped by about 5 percentage points, from 38.3% to 33.4%.

David Douglas improved from the 2022-23 school year; The district had 2,929 students chronically absent last school year, down from 3,266 the year before. That’s a change of 4.3 percentage points.

The number of chronically absent students at Parkrose increased slightly, from 1,208 to 1,235. The district’s chronic absenteeism rate is particularly high, with 46.6% of students falling into this category. However, the district also made significant progress in its work with kindergarteners, from 50.6% of chronically absent children to 42.1%.

None of Portland’s three school districts responded to the request. WWrequests for comments.

Tim Boyd, ODE’s director of district and school performance, said the department is working to understand why the state’s progress on attendance lags behind others across the country. “It’s not just about getting kids into school, it’s about better understanding the reasons and barriers that keep them from coming,” Boyd said in the webinar.