State education officials are considering a number of new ways to measure success in Oregon schools following a 2024 law meant to boost student performance and establish better accountability standards for districts.

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.

Williams and Cassie Medina, assistant superintendent of education innovation and improvement at the state education agency, presented to the press the targets and a 12-year vision for improvement in Oregon schools, which are struggling to bounce back from declines in regular attendance since the COVID pandemic and pre-pandemic proficiency slumps in key subjects.

Oregon schools have among the highest absenteeism rates in the country, the state’s latest data show, and the state’s fourth and eighth graders scored in the bottom half of all states for reading proficiency in the 2025 National Assessment for Educational Progress, often referred to as the nation’s report card. They scored at the bottom in the nation when data was adjusted for student demographics and poverty levels.

“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,” Williams said.

Since 1999, the state’s singular educational target has been reaching a 90% graduation rate among Oregon high schoolers. New measures of success being proposed are more specific.

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.

The new targets both, “set a clear expectation that outcomes must improve in meaningful and measurable ways over time,” Medina said. But they also 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.

Each district will work with the department of education to set four-year targets to make incremental growth, and will be offered support as needed, such as teacher coaching and, when necessary, “more prescriptive use of state school funds,” Medina said, alluding to the state’s new authorities under the Education Accountability Law.

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.

“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.”

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News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/04/14/oregon-education-accountability-targets-districts-students-success/