More than a decade ago, Oregon leaders established a goal that starting with the Class of 2025, 100% of students would complete high school successfully. Students in that class just started 11th grade.

Graduation rates are a critical metric for measuring high school success, but one number doesn't always tell the whole story.

John Kitzhaber, the governor who first announced that goal at his inaugural speech in January 2011, resigned from office in February 2015. Oregon’s new governor, Tina Kotek, announced a different graduation rate goal when she was running for office: to improve Oregon’s graduation rate to “90% for all student groups by 2027.” That’s 10% lower, two years later.

Since 2012, OPB has been on a journey — following the education of a group of students that all started at the same southeast Portland elementary school. They are the Class of 2025.

In the two years since students returned to school in-person, attendance rates across the state and the country have remained below where they were before the pandemic.

Some of the students OPB has been following in the Class of 2025 spend twice as much time in math classes as their peers, an effort that gives students a better understanding — and better grades — than those who have math less often.