Low attendance and a short school year undermine success of Oregon students, according to new analysis

One third of Oregon students aren’t attending school consistently. The state also has one of the shortest school years in the country. And, Oregon ranks lower than other states on reading and math proficiency.

But where these three challenges point to a shared problem, new research highlights the potential for improvement. An analysis by ECONorthwest, commissioned by education advocacy group Stand for Children, found that improved attendance rates and a more standard school year would improve academic proficiency in the state.

“ECONorthwest found that if we were to align with the national average around school year length and cut our rates of chronic absenteeism back to where they were before the pandemic, we would move up really dramatically in our literacy outcomes, specifically, and math outcomes,” said Stand for Children executive director Sarah Pope.

The analysis uses data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the national exam administered by a division of the U.S. Department of Education, often called the Nation’s Report Card. NAEP tests a sample of fourth and eighth grade students from each state to draw comparisons in English language arts and math. Oregon is ranked near the bottom of states and below national averages in both subjects at both grade levels.

“We would move to sixth in the country for ELA [English Language Arts] and we would move to middle of the pack, 25th, for math,” Pope said.

The new Stand for Children analysis comes at a time when Oregon legislators are holding meetings around instructional time and considering legislation related to attendance. In 2019, before the pandemic, chronic absenteeism – students missing 10 or more of school days - in Oregon was 20%. Today, it’s 34%.

“Our kids just don’t have enough time and our educators don’t have enough time,” Pope said. “It’s really hard to become a strong reader when you don’t get time on tasks, time to practice.”

Earlier this month, the Oregon Interim House Committee on Education held an informational meeting on instructional time, inviting Brown University researcher Matthew Kraft to share conclusions from his 2024 research article, “Time in School: A Conceptual Framework, Synthesis of the Causal Research, and Empirical Exploration.”

“Based on data that’s from 2017-2018… Oregon ranks 47^th out of 50 in total hours of time in school during an academic year,” Kraft said.

Kraft said there’s a connection between spending time in school and academic achievement.

“On average, more instructional time improves student learning outcomes including student performance on state standardized tests.”

Oregon’s instructional time rules, by the numbers

Nine hundred hours. That’s the minimum amount of instructional time Oregon requires of its elementary schools. It’s 990 hours for ninth through 11th graders, with a 966-hour requirement for seniors. This modification allows flexibility for 12th graders who work, or have other time commitments after completing their high school credits.

But those hourly figures aren’t just for the time students spend in classrooms. School districts may allot up to 60 of those hours for recess in grades K-3, up to 30 hours for staff professional development, and up to 30 more hours for parent-teacher conferences.

Oregon sets maximum hours schools can be in session per day: eight hours for elementary and middle schoolers, and eight and a half hours for high school students.

At the national level, Kraft found that the average school year across K-12 public schools is 178.5 school days, or 1,231 hours.

The Oregon Department of Education receives a notification when school districts self-report being out of compliance with these rules, but the only consistent record of data collection for instructional hours in Oregon is for physical education.

Susan Payne, ODE Education Standards and Systems Specialist, said that is in part because the state wants to lower the “reporting burden” placed on districts.

“At this time, we do not collect data [on instructional hours by district],” Payne said.

“We did collect data for the 2013-2014 school year.”

At the House education committee meeting earlier this month, Education Commission of the States’ principal consultant Jennifer Thomsen presented a 50-state comparison of instructional time. It found that 31 states plus Washington D.C. require at least 180 days of instruction per year; Oregon was not one of them.

In Oregon and 11 other states, there is no day requirement at the state level. Also similar to Oregon, ECS’s report found many states allow recess and professional development for teachers to count as instructional time for students.

But setting a minimum number of hours leaves a lot of room for variation.

That is what ECONorthwest and Stand for Children found in their analysis: drastic differences in instructional time from district to district within Oregon, resulting in some students having more time to learn than others.

“Elementary school students in the district with the most instructional hours in the state would receive about 1.4 years of additional instructional time by 5th grade and almost 3 additional years by 12th grade than a student in districts providing the least amount of instructional time,” according to the report.

Stand for Children is working on a more specific district-by-district analysis for later this spring.

A “head-scratching” question

Oregon’s new graduation rates for the Class of 2025, out today, show continued improvement in getting a higher percentage of students to complete high school. But Oregon’s graduation rates are still lower than those in many states. And as Pope points out, Oregon trails other states in most of its academic outcomes, despite being middle of the pack in spending.

“We have incredibly talented students. We know we have incredibly talented teachers,” Pope said.

“It’s sort of head scratching. Why are we in the bottom when it comes to almost all these measured outcomes?”

The point of the analysis, Pope said, was to see if more time in school is what keeps Oregon behind.

“We’re really curious about the policy moves we can make to get more kids back in school, and what are the policy moves we should consider as a state to get our school year on par with the national average,” Pope said.

Pope added that the timing of the analysis should serve as a warning to legislators and school leaders against cutting school days to save money, even as budgets tighten. She thinks back to 2003, when dozens of Oregon school districts cut the school year short for financial reasons.

“We’re concerned, as an advocacy organization, concerned that we’re starting to see the economic signs of a downturn again. We cannot cut days. We have to hold the line on the days that we have.”

The solutions

Chronic absenteeism is a statewide issue. The solution should be statewide too, Pope said. She says the state has made a difference on the ground when it has steered school districts toward specific priorities.

“The places where we have seen a slight uptick is when the state has channeled resources and attention into some high leverage strategies,” Pope said. “We did that with Measure 98 with high school success. We started to do that with the early literacy success, and we think it’s time to do that with attendance.”

Stand is working with Oregon legislators on a bill that would require attendance reporting four times a year, rather than annual reporting after a school year is over. Pope said the Legislature could also move to change rules around what counts as instructional time, or require ODE to create a statewide early warning system specifically for attendance.

“Historically, ODE has responded when the Legislature has said ‘you must respond,’” Pope said. “And the Legislature hasn’t told them they must respond on this … they [the Oregon Department of Education] have more authority around attendance that they could be utilizing.”

She said this analysis makes an important connection for parents, teachers, families, school leaders, and elected officials across the state.

“What we offer to children in terms of the amount of instruction they get is going to have a direct connection to how well they do academically,” Pope said.