Portland students were more likely to graduate from high school if they came through a middle school than if they were students at a K-8 school. That's the main finding of OPB's analysis of state graduation data.
The analysis comes as parents are debating Portland's proposals to split up to 22 K-8 programs into elementary and middle schools.
Students who attended eighth grade in a Portland Public middle school — and went on to high school in Portland — graduated 81 percent of the time. That's compared to a 72 percent graduation rate for students who attended a K-8 school before high school.
But when it comes to Portland's low-income students, those differences largely disappear. Economically disadvantaged students who went to middle schools graduated from high school 68 percent of the time compared with 67 percent of the time if they went to K-8s.
OPB analyzed Oregon Department of Education data on students in the graduating classes of 2013 and 2014.