Oregon Education Department leaders shared new Statewide Performance Growth Targets on Monday in a news conference in advance of consideration by the State Board of Education. The board will meet on Thursday to consider the proposal and decide on adopting the new targets at a later date, said Charlene Williams, director of the state’s education agency.
The new targets are required under the Education Accountability Law passed by the state Legislature two years ago, which directs school districts to set goals with the Oregon Department of Education for improving attendance, graduation rates, reading proficiency and math performance. That will begin in the upcoming 2026-27 school year under the law.
Given that Oregon is worst in the nation by several of these metrics, I’m not convinced that the Oregon Department of Education is who I want defining “success.”
We know that too many students are not yet experiencing the outcomes they deserve, full stop. There’s real urgency in this moment and a shared responsibility to do better. – Oregon Department of Education Director Charlene Williams
This “urgency” should have come a decade ago.
Since 1999, the state’s singular educational target has been reaching a 90% graduation rate among Oregon high schoolers.
The consequence of this metric is that high schools now “graduate” kids who can barely read, write, or do math. A high school diploma, as I’ve said before, isn’t even a certificate of attendance. It means almost nothing. It certainly is no proof of any kind of aptitude.
The state’s 12-year targets include:
- A nearly 25% increase in students regularly attending kindergarten through second grade, going from a 70% regular attendance rate for those students today, to at least 95% by the 2037-38 school year.
- Improving overall K-12 attendance by about 30%, going from a 66.5% regular attendance rate today, to just over 97%.
- Improving third grade literacy rates so more than two-thirds of third graders are considered proficient in English language arts, reading and writing.
- Improving eighth grade math proficiency so more than two-thirds of eighth graders do math at grade-level.
- Getting at least 95% of ninth graders on track to graduate within four years.
- Graduating at least 95% of Oregon high schoolers within four years.
This is, I think, exactly what one would expect from the Oregon Department of Education. Their goals are ridiculous. Schools don’t fully control attendance in the first place, so I’m not sure how this is a viable metric. But more than that, having a “goal” of only 2/3rds of students being proficient in English or math is such a low bar (which we’re currently not meeting of course). And we continue with the pointless graduation metric.
Despite this:
The new targets…aren’t numbers that schools themselves have to reach, she explained, just the state as a whole somehow.
“These are not the targets for individual districts or charter schools, and districts and charter schools will not be directly held accountable to these numbers,” she explained.
So…even these are just amorphous aspirations. Great.
If districts do not show improvement, the Oregon Department of Education can make decisions about where to direct a portion of the money it gets from the state, something the department has historically had little hand in.
More power to a terrible state education department is not a recipe for success.
“If we meet these targets, we will see attendance return to pre-pandemic levels. We will see significant gains in academic achievement and graduation rates, surpassing where we were before COVID,” Medina said. “At that point, Oregon would be performing at or near the top nationally across several key measures.”
And if everyone won the lottery we’d all be rich. Public education in Oregon needs to be completely overhauled, starting with the Oregon Department of Education.