Amid Dismal Test Scores, Oregon Weighs Its Short School Year

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Depending on how they are interpreted, recent academic results from Oregon could be described as merely poor or truly awful.

State test results released last fall showed slight improvements in math and English scores since 2024, yet still lagged far behind the standard set before the COVID pandemic. Meanwhile, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal exam administered biannually to hundreds of thousands of students, recently placed Oregon among the worst performers in the country. Adjusted for student demographics and poverty levels, it ranked 50th among states in fourth-grade math and reading, 49th in eighth-grade math, and 47th in eighth-grade reading.

Now local observers are pointing to Oregon’s relatively brief school year, as well as high rates of absenteeism, as one explanation for the dismal results. In an analysis released by the nonprofit group Stand for Children, researchers show that sizable gaps in seat time between Oregon and other states — and even larger ones separating districts within Oregon — compound over years into massive disparities in opportunities to learn. Advocates argue that loose rules governing how states report attendance data also contribute to the problem.

Sarah Pope, the executive director of Stand for Children’s Oregon affiliate, said her state was “definitely on the low end” in terms of instructional time made available to children. On average, their school year lasts 165 days (compared with 179 days in the U.S. as a whole), and students receive 9 percent fewer instructional hours than their counterparts around the country; over time, that adds up to well over one year of missed schooling.

“When we tell people that we’re 9 percent short, their eyes glaze over because people can’t imagine what that means,” Pope remarked. “But when we tell them it’s a year difference over the course of a K–12 experience, which is like graduating as a junior, they’re like, ‘Oh gosh.’”

The group’s report notes that Oregon is one of just 10 states that sets no minimum of total school days per year, allowing districts to set their own schedules so long as they hit an annual minimum of instructional hours (900 for students enrolled in kindergarten, elementary school, and middle school, and slightly more for high schoolers). In practice, the state’s average K–8 student receives 1,111 hours of designated school time each year, considerably below the national average of 1,231 hours for K–12 students. Only Maine, Nevada, and Hawaii provide less schooling.

Those figures are drawn from a 2024 study by Brown University economist Matthew Kraft, which also found that differences in instructional time between states can be dwarfed by those within states. By the end of elementary school, for example, Oregon students living in a district at the bottom of the state’s school time rankings receive a full 1.4 years less education than those in a district at the top. The gap explodes to nearly three years’ worth of instruction by the time those students graduate high school.

Aside from the length of the school year, the pandemic-era spike in chronic absenteeism (the percentage of students missing 10 percent or more of the school year) has further eroded the amount of time that kids spend learning. And while that trend has proven stubbornly persistent in nearly every jurisdiction, Oregon’s spike has been higher and longer-lasting than most. According to FutureEd, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., Oregon’s rate of chronic absence reached a stunning peak of 38 percent in 2022–23, only falling to 33.5 percent by 2024–25 (compared with a national average of 22 percent the same year). 

Kraft, who recently testified on the subject before the education committee of the Oregon House of Representatives, said it was “wildly inequitable” for students in different parts of a state to enjoy vastly less time with teachers than those elsewhere. Both researchers and elected officials needed to examine the intersection of poor attendance and inadequate instructional time more closely, he continued.

“The outliers offering substantially less time have wound up with far less learning opportunities for students,” Kraft observed in an interview with The 74. “Curriculum is built around having x amount of minutes in a day to teach math or science, and when teachers and students don’t have that, the results illustrate the negative consequences.”

‘We should not be proud’

Those consequences could be reversed with policy changes, according to Stand for Children’s analysis. 

Using existing estimates of the impact of school time and absenteeism on student test scores, the authors calculated that Oregon would dramatically improve its NAEP performance by lifting statutory requirements for schooling time and cutting absenteeism to pre-COVID rates. If those conditions were both reached, they found, Oregon students enrolled in kindergarten today would move from 48th in the nation in reading to sixth-place by the beginning of high school. A somewhat smaller leap, from 49th place to 25th place, could be achieved in math scores.

As of yet, no such sweeping changes are in the offing. If anything, a combination of diminished enrollment figures — the product of both lower fertility and a COVID-era flight from public schools — and budgetary reversals has led at least some districts to consider paring the school year back further. Reynolds School District, which enrolls around 10,000 students in the suburbs east of Portland, has already cut six days from its school calendar in response.

During previous financial shortfalls, the state was one of only a few around the country where districts chose to compress learning time. It has also been one of the national leaders in popularizing the four-day school week, with over one-third of its school districts operating on a truncated schedule. While sometimes popular with family and school staff, that shift often leads to a deterioration in learning and comparatively few benefits in faculty retention.

Given Oregon’s clear decline in academic achievement, Stand for Children’s Pope said that district leaders should refuse to shorten their school year at the very least. Her organization is backing the passage of HB 4154, a bill that would require state authorities to report on absenteeism four times during the school year, rather than just once, as is now mandated. Such a law — scheduled for hearings before the state Senate’s education committee in the coming days — would allow for school systems to conduct earlier outreach to families when their students are at risk of becoming chronically absent.

She also supports the adoption of a more exacting definition of learning time. At the moment, she said, up to 60 of the required instructional hours can be filled through activities like professional development and parent-teacher conferences, which occur when children aren’t in school.

“Do we think it’s right that our definition of instructional time has an allowance for approximately 10 days when kids don’t have to be there? And it can count for instructional minutes?” Pope asked.

Emielle Nischik, the executive director of the Oregon School Boards Association, said that the state’s students deserved “as much time in school as students around the country. But she added that more instructional hours and better data reporting could only be gained through increases in education spending. 

“Oregon school funding adjusted for inflation has essentially been flat since the 1990s, even as Oregon and the federal government have added staffing and services requirements that cost money,” Nischik wrote in an email. “We are open to any discussion of increasing class time as long as it comes with the understanding that more days will cost more money.”

Last summer, Gov. Tina Kotek signed a record budget of $11.3 billion to cover the K–12 system through 2027. According to an estimate by the National Education Association, Oregon spent nearly $19,000 per pupil in daily attendance in the 2023–24 school year, ranking 20th among all states. 

Kraft compared the resource of time to that of money. While lawsuits have been won to force states and districts to spend more money on schools, no such litigation has focused on learning time as a necessary educational input. 

“That has not been the case around time, in large part because schools are following the law, and the minimums we set in many states — not all, but many — are very, very low. We should not be proud to have met these minimums.”

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