Oregon's standardized testing scores in 2017 continued to fall below expectations. Less than 50 percent of students who took the tests passed the math portion, with 53 percent passing the reading exam.
Rob Manning / OPB
Standardized test results out Thursday show that Oregon's low-income and minority students continue to lag behind.
Oregon students in third grade through high school took tougher, longer exams last spring. They're connected to new Common Core standards. The results, though, show the same gaps as previous tests.
Barely one quarter of Latino and African-American students met the benchmark for third-grade reading. Only one-third of low-income students did. More than half of white third graders met that benchmark.
"Although in some categories we saw improvement, but they're not significant enough to suggest that the gap is actually closing," said Salam Noor, Oregon's deputy superintendent of public instruction.
Older students didn't do much better than third graders, and the gaps are just as large on the math exams.
Officials say there are districts worth applauding. African-American, Native American, and Hispanic students in Beaverton outperformed the Oregon average for those student groups.