After years in the lowest ranks of school attendance in the nation, Oregon schools have shown a bit of progress. An Oregon Journalism Project analysis of recent data shows regular statewide attendance in the first half of the school year rose to 70.6%, an increase of 3 percentage points over the previous year.
Click here to search school districts
Even so, nearly a third of Oregon students were still chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 10% of school days, or about two days a month.
The state’s attendance has ranked among the nation’s worst for the past decade, according to FutureEd, a policy think tank at Georgetown University. For the 2024–25 school year, for example, only Alaska and the District of Columbia had worse rates of chronic absenteeism. Oregon’s recent 33.5% far surpassed the national average of 22%.
Historically, the Oregon Department of Education hasn’t shared attendance reports until months after the school year ends. (Rhode Island, on the other hand, tracks attendance daily and shares results on a dashboard, allowing users to track chronic absenteeism much as investors follow key economic indicators.)
To set a higher standard of transparency, OJP obtained 2025–26 attendance data via public records requests to create a first-of-its-kind searchable database.
With this tracker, Oregonians can see how consistently students attended school from August to December 2025 and compare those rates to the year before. You can search by school name or sort by enrollment, county, or change in attendance rate.
Regular school attendance, defined as attending 90% or more of school days, is paramount to Oregon’s academic success–especially for early literacy. Oregon’s fourth grade reading scores rank last in the nation, adjusted for demographics, according to an Urban Institute analysis.
In addition to the tracker, OJP also analyzed underlying data behind the attendance rates and emerged with several findings.
- While Oregon still has among the worst attendance rates in the U.S., this year the rate has gone up:
2023–24: 67.9%
2024–25: 67.6%
2025–26: 70.6%
- Attendance increased across the board for all student groups. Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders had the highest gain, 4 percentage points. Hispanic students went up 2.8 points while Black students saw the lowest gain, 1.6 points. Still, all students of color, except Asian students, had lower attendance rates than the student population as a whole.
- Individual schools with the largest gains in regular attendance year over year include: Lincoln School of Early Learning in Coos County (up 37.3%); Dufur School in Wasco County (up 32.9%); Oregon Family School in Harney County (up 20.5%); Centennial Elementary in Linn County (up 20.9%); and Roosevelt Elementary in Klamath County (up 20.2%).
- A school with one of the biggest drops in attendance was Powers High School in Coos County. And the Jewell School District in Clatsop County had the sharpest drop for an entire district, from 78.9% to 35.5%.
Earlier this year, the Oregon Legislature passed a law that requires the state to share attendance data more frequently—four times a year. The first report is expected in the fall.
Until that happens, OJP will continue to update its statewide Attendance Tracker.
NOTE: 1,282 schools in Oregon are listed in the database. A few schools did not report attendance data to the state for this time period. If ODE listed the percentage of regular attenders as “>95%” (greater than 95%), we adjusted those rates to 95% for presentation, clarity and analysis.
READ MORE of our series “Oregon Schools: What Went Wrong”
Oregon Schools: What Went Wrong, Nov. 12, 2025
Schooled by Mississippi, Dec. 8, 2025
Leaving It to Local Control Impedes Oregon’s Reading Rescue, Jan. 29, 2026
Oregon’s Education Workforce Climbed While Student Enrollment Slid, Feb. 5, 2026
Unprepared: The Broken Pipeline Teaching Oregon’s Teachers, March 15, 2026
The Oregon Education Association Is Mighty—but Slipping, April 20, 2026
If you are a student, parent, teacher or former teacher, school administrator or policymaker with ideas on how to fix Oregon’s schools, we want to hear from you. Please share your thoughts and how to reach you by clicking on this link.
This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit investigative newsroom for the state of Oregon.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
