Although years have passed since the COVID-19 pandemic, Oregon’s K-12 students still struggle to go to school, according to new data from the state Department of Education.
In the 2024-25 school year, about two-thirds of students in Oregon attended school at least 90% of the time.
That’s a small increase over the previous year, but still down by 13 percentage points compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trisha Evens, director of secondary education at the Grants Pass School District, is disheartened. She said the district has tried really hard to get kids to come to school.
"It just feels like a little bit of a sucker punch," she said. "We have not been able to get parents or students buying into the value of their education post-COVID."
Evens said the district frequently checks in on students, including through phone calls, letters and home visits. It has both incentive and accountability plans to encourage better attendance and has even tried partnering with the county's juvenile justice system.
About 68% of Grants Pass students attended regularly — higher than the statewide average, but a decrease from the previous year.
Much of southwest Oregon saw similar numbers, although Klamath Falls City Schools and the Coos Bay School District were particularly low, at about 57% and 59% respectively.
Phoenix High School had more chronically absent students than regularly attending students.
Evens believes that families no longer appreciate the social-emotional learning schools provide and are quick to switch to an online or charter school rather than work with the district to address the child's needs.
"I wonder how much further we would get with kids if we just all stuck together and did this work together," she said. "Not just the school, not just the parents, not just the community, but we did this work together to rally around kids, to help support them and their achievement. I think we'd see some good results."
At a recent press conference, state administrators did not mention specific solutions to address persistent chronic absenteeism.
"We share the urgency. We share the concern. We're going to continue to elevate best practices that we see with districts," said Charlene Williams, director of the Oregon Department of Education. "It's going to take us really rolling up our sleeves and identifying which strategies and practices are going to work best to boost attendance."
Many districts also had low percentages of students meeting state grade-level expectations in third-grade English language arts and eighth-grade math. Evans called this "unacceptable."
But this new data also brings some promising news: almost 87% of the state’s ninth graders are on track to graduate high school, the highest number ever recorded.
Grants Pass is a few percentage points below the statewide average, at about 82%, but that’s still an increase over the previous year.
Evens called this the district's “great success.”
"We just continue to make good gains with our ninth-grade students, and we know if we keep them on track, they're more likely to graduate from high school," she said.
Ashland School District did particularly well in this area, with more than 95% of its ninth graders on track to graduate.
But Klamath Falls City Schools saw a decline since the previous year, down to about 61% on track.
Statewide enrollment roughly held steady compared to the previous school year, slipping about 0.6%. Some southwest Oregon districts saw larger declines: Douglas County School District dropped 2.7%, Bandon fell 2.4% and Klamath Falls City Schools declined 4.4%.
