Eighty-three percent of the class of 2025 graduated on time from high school last June, the highest rate since the current measurement system was put into place 15 years ago, according to newly released data from the Oregon Department of Education.
Oregon education officials hailed that rate — up 1.7% from the class of 2024 — as a notable milestone in the state’s otherwise sluggish attempts to recover from the pandemic’s widespread academic disruptions. The class of 2025 was the first since the pandemic to go through all four years of high school without building closures or mask and distancing requirements.
In practical terms, that means about 500 more students graduated last June than if the rate had not changed from the prior year.
Ideally, their diplomas are supposed to signify they are ready to take on higher education or enter the workforce. But whether that’s actually true for every student is the subject of significant debate.
Like every class since 2020, last spring’s graduating seniors did not have to demonstrate that they had mastered 10th grade level reading, writing and math skills, either via passing a series of standardized tests or by completing a standalone series of assignments designed by their teachers.
That’s because the state Board of Education suspended that requirement in the pandemic’s wake, and then renewed that suspension through at least the class of 2028, or the current year’s sophomores, citing concerns that the system was creating unfair hurdles for students historically pushed to the margins of the public school system.
But change is in the air.
Charlene Williams, the director of the Oregon Department of Education, told reporters this week that she did not anticipate the suspension — highly controversial in some corners because of concerns that it artificially inflated graduation rates — would be renewed for a third time.
Just what will replace it is not yet clear, especially as many other states, including Massachusetts and New York, are moving away from making graduation contingent upon an exit exam.
Williams suggested that Oregon is closely watching neighboring Washington, where the state Board of Education is working on a proposal for the 2027 legislative session to overhaul graduation requirements, broadening the number of ways students can show they’ve hit learning targets to better connect to real-world goals.
If the plans set by other states are any guide, that could mean anything from a career-technical education focus that connects to enrollment in a vocational school or a job to taking a certain number of advanced courses for college credit to hitting a certain score on a test like the SAT or the ACT.
Something needs to change, said Whitney Grubbs, executive director of Foundations for a Better Oregon, an influential schools nonprofit.
“Without having a clear diploma requirement that allows us to evaluate skills and knowledge in a way that is comparable across the state, we have eroded public trust in the diploma, and we have left ourselves open to folks wondering whether [the graduation rate] is going up because we have made it easier or because students are demonstrating the skills they need,” Grubbs said. “It is important to have both that individual demonstration and systemic accountability.”
She said Oregon should not start from scratch, reinventing the wheel and waiting years before putting new guidelines in place, especially since the Department of Education has already commissioned significant surveys of what Oregonians believe a high school diploma should reflect.
Instead, Grubbs said, the state should settle upon clear ideas of the skills it wants high schoolers to have and make a commitment to letting them show those skills in a variety of different ways.
For years, the Oregon public school system has had a singular focus on improving graduation rates, which only a dozen years ago stood at 72% of all students graduating on time, among the very worst rates in the nation.
Today, the state is closer to neighboring states, on par with Idaho and slightly behind California’s 87.5% rate. (Nationwide graduation rate statistics are difficult to come by, having last been updated by the National Center for Education Statistics for the 2021-2022 school year, when the national average was 87%.)
Currently, in order to graduate, Oregon students must complete 24 credits, including four years of English and three years apiece of math and science. Starting with next year’s graduates, Oregon students will also have to take a financial literacy class to graduate.
That’s more required credits than at least 32 other states, a statistic cited by Oregon Department of Education officials as proof of the heft of earning a high school diploma in the state. But a significant number of those credits are in electives, including health and physical education, similar to what is required in neighboring California and Washington.
Other states — including Michigan, Ohio, Rhode Island, Delaware and Louisiana — require students to take four years of math to graduate, while Alabama and Georgia also require four years of science classes.
Oregon’s rising graduation rates do represent a rare bright spot among education statistics in a state which has a stubbornly high rate of student absenteeism and troublingly low levels of elementary and middle school students showing that they are doing work that would earn them at least a B on state reading and math standardized tests.
The new graduation data also pointed to progress for groups of students who have traditionally graduated at rates below the state average, including students in special education classes, Indigenous students and students in foster care. The graduation rate for all three of those groups grew by more than 3%, even though it remains 9 percentage points below state averages for Indigenous students, 11 percentage points below the state average for special education students and a whopping 29 percentage points below for students living in foster care.
One of the state’s most potent tools to get students through high school in four years is its investment in career-technical education programs, which offer practical, hands-on training in areas from construction to medical fields to education. More than 97% of students who took a three-year sequence of career-technical education classes graduated on time, the data shows.
Cary Meier, the principal at Hillsboro High School, where 55% of the student body is Hispanic and 30% of students come from families experiencing poverty, said her school has worked hard to focus on student groups who are traditionally below state graduation averages. It has paid off: The school’s graduation rate for Hispanic students was 85%, up three percentage points from the previous year and above the statewide rate for all students.
Meier said the growth is attributable to a number of factors, including core academic course offerings in both English and Spanish, international baccalaureate classes that are available to all students, not just high achievers, and grade-level teams of staff members, including school counselors, graduation coaches, special education teachers and specialists in English language learners who work together to zero in on students who need extra help and support.
The school has also built 45 minutes into its master schedule twice a week for students who’ve fallen behind to make up lessons and coursework with their teachers. (Students who are all caught up can use that time for anything from basketball to macramé to meeting with affinity groups and other clubs.)
For those who need even more help, Hillsboro High offers free after-school tutoring, staffed by teachers and bilingual classified staff, with transportation home afterward, Meier said.
The high school also runs a program called “Juntos” — translated as “together”in Spanish — that offers nitty-gritty information about what it takes to graduate from high school and apply to college, from how to read a transcript to how to apply for scholarships.
Typically, the conversations happen over shared meals. This year, it’s moving online due to concerns from families over increased federal immigrant enforcement, Meier said. That external threat, and its chilling impact on student attendance, could dampen graduation rates for future classes, despite the herculean efforts of teachers and support staff, she said.
“We have had dozens of students impacted by detainments, whether it is their parents, their uncles, their aunts, or students who have been pulled over themselves,” Meier said. “Some families are learning to live with it, some have chosen to leave and self-deport, a few have chosen to go to [the district’s] online academy. I feel like we unfortunately are at this new normal.”
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