“Congratulations, you’re about to escape high school,” David Duncan tells the 2023 graduates of Wallowa High School during commencement ceremonies Saturday, June 3, 2023. Wallowa County high schools posted a 91.9% four-year graduation rate in the 2022-23 school year, more than 10 percentage points better than the state average.

SALEM — The 37,700 students who made up Oregon’s 2023 high school graduating class posted the second-highest four-year graduation rate — 81.3% — ever recorded by the state.

In Wallowa County, 91.9% of students graduated in four years. In the six counties of Northeastern Oregon, only Morrow County had a higher rate, 96.4%.

The Oregon Department of Education, which presented the statewide graduation rates Tuesday, Jan. 23, stressed that the Class of 2023 shouldered the full brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic as those students were starting high school when the pandemic began.

Peter Rudy, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Education, said the 81.3% graduation rate is especially noteworthy given all the challenges the students faced from the onset of their freshman year.

“Most of Oregon’s schools did not return to in-person instructional models consistently until the end of 2021, at the end of 10th grade for this cohort,” he said.

“This group of students demonstrated the ability to adapt to different ways of learning and demonstrating understanding, to engaging with peers and educators in online environments, and to taking care of themselves and sustaining engagement without many of the social motivators that prior classes had been able to avail themselves of, including sports, clubs and extracurricular activities — and even socializing with friends outside of school. Through all of these disruptions, they kept learning and striving. That is commendable.”

The mark is identical to the graduation rate the state saw in 2022 and a mere 1.3 percentage points below the all-time high of 82.6% set by the 2019-20 graduating class.

In Wallowa County, Joseph Charter School had a 100% graduation rate, with all 20 of the students in its 2022-23 cohort graduating in four years. Enterprise High School posted a 93.8% graduation rate. Wallowa High School had a 70% graduation rate, and it’s an example of how just a few students in a smaller school can make a difference in the rate from year to year — of a cohort with 10 students, seven graduated in four years. However, Wallowa High School’s five-year graduation rate was 100%. (The online version of this story at wallowa.com includes a chart showing the last six years of graduation rates for Wallowa County schools.)

The five-year rate complements the four-year graduation rate, the Department of Education said, while acknowledging that some students have different paths to achieving a high school credential and may need more than four years to do it. Oregon’s five-year completion rate stands at 86.6% for the Class of 2022 and is the third-highest rate ever reported.

The five-year completion rate is made up of students who earned a regular diploma, modified diploma, GED, adult high school diploma or extended diploma within five years of entering high school. Students who received a GED, adult high school diploma or extended diploma were classified as “other completers” in the Department of Education’s 2023 statewide graduation report.

“When ODE uses the term ‘other completers,’ we are referring to the three credentials (GED, adult high school diploma and extended diploma) that are added as ‘completers’ when calculating the five-year completer rate,” Rudy said.

In Wallowa County

Wallowa County educators said the county graduation rates are testimony to the relatively small size of the area’s schools, which make it more difficult for a student to fall through the cracks and not graduate in four or five years.

“As a staff, we were really able to help our students individually to meet the requirements for graduation a lot easier than a large high school with large class sizes,” said Lance Homan, the superintendent of Joseph Charter School.

Landon Braden, the superintendent of the Wallowa Education Service District (and the superintendent at Troy), pointed to another factor: The county’s schools, he said, benefit from a number of community partners.

“You have a lot of purposeful support such as the mental health community partners and the preventions specialists and the purposeful tracking of data,” Braden said.

Prevention specialists help prevent the use of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs by students. Mental health professionals, like counselors, look after the mental and emotional health of students.

Braden noted that some other schools across the state have the advantage of smaller class cohorts, but may not have graduation rates as high as in Wallowa County. “Without the systematic support it’s like you’re not taking advantage of a gift,” he said.

Braden and Homan noted that Wallowa County has gained ground in providing educational opportunities not previously available in more rural areas, but are more common in metro ones. Bigger school districts, Braden said, “may have more electives and more opportunity for dual credits or things like that, but those are even areas that we’ve expanded tremendously in the last couple of years; you have a sawmill that’s being built as a part of a career pathway in Wallowa, and an aviation program in Joseph,” Braden said.

Homan agreed.

“As a district, we have expanded our dual credit and CTE courses to try to give every student an opportunity to find something that sparks their interest and hopefully helps keep our students motivated to do well,” he said.

Braden also gave credit for the graduation rates in Wallowa County to a “holistic” approach to tailoring education to each students. Staff members and teachers in each Wallowa County school know each student by name, he said, and that plays a large role in the consistent graduation rates in county schools.

Rebecca Nordtvedt, the superintendent of the Enterprise School District, said that “historically, Enterprise has always had excellent graduation rates” and attributed those rates to a number of factors, including small class sizes.

“We rarely have a high school class over 20,” she said, “whereas in big districts I have worked in class sizes were in the mid- to upper 30s.” In addition, she said, the school has specific tutoring programs to offer additional help for students who need it.

“Bottom line, as a small school, we are able to monitor students closely and intervene with additional support to meet the needs of our students,” she said.

Other countiesBaker County (80%), Umatilla County (80.4%) and Union County (82.9%) all either met or were slightly below the statewide graduation rate for the 2022-23 school year among Northeast Oregon counties.

Grant County was the outlier, reporting a 2022-23 graduation rate of 64.2%, down more than 14 percentage points from the 78.4% graduation rate the county reported for the 2021-22 school year.

Grant County’s situation is unique, with a pair of outlying statistics affecting the county’s overall graduation rate. Four of the county’s five high schools exceeded the state graduation rate.

Long Creek High School, with just four students in its 2022-23 graduating class, had a graduation rate of 50%. Oregon Connections Academy, an online virtual school that is part of the Prairie City School District, reported a graduation rate of 55% for the 2022-23 school year.

Prairie City High School itself reported an 85.7% graduation rate. But when the numbers for Oregon Connections Academy — which has a much larger enrollment — are factored in, the graduation rate for the district as a whole was pulled down to 57.9%.

All the other high schools in the county exceeded the statewide average. Grant Union had an 89.7% graduation rate, Dayville’s was 85.7% and Monument posted a sterling 100% graduation rate.

Oregon’s graduation requirements

Oregon has one of the more demanding sets of graduation requirements in the country when measured by course credits, according to the Oregon Department of Education. Students must earn 24 credits, complete personalized learning requirements and demonstrate proficiency in essential skills.

The essential skills Oregon students are required to be proficient in prior to graduation include reading comprehension; writing clearly and accurately; applying mathematics in a variety of settings; listening actively and speaking clearly and coherently; thinking critically and analytically; using technology to live, learn and work; demonstrating community and civic engagement; demonstrating global literacy; and demonstrating personal management and teamwork skills.

Prior to 2020, proficiency in three of those essential skills — reading comprehension, writing and applying mathematics — were determined via state-approved assessment options and classroom assessments. All other skills were embedded in the students’ K-12 curricula, combined with classroom assessments by teachers.

After 2020, all of those skills were embedded in students’ K-12 education coupled with classroom assessments by teachers. Classroom assessments take the form of formative and interim/benchmark tests.

The numbers

According to the Department of Education, there are 533,012 students in schools across Oregon who speak more than 300 languages. Those students are served by 81,826 educators spread across 1,270 public schools, 131 charter schools and 19 education service districts. Oregon’s graduation rate has steadily ticked up over time. In 2013-14, the state’s graduation rate was 72%. It has risen every year since then, hitting 80% for the first time with the 2018-19 graduating class.

The five-year completion rate, like the four-year rate, also has trended upward over time. This year’s rate is 0.3 percentage point higher than the rate in 2021 and 5.2 points higher than the class of 2014’s five-year completion rate.

Among specific student groups, students who were English language learners at any point during high school saw their graduation rates rise by 2.8 percentage points when compared to the 2022 graduation class, the highest such rise of any student group.

Homeless students and career technical education concentrators showed the second-highest graduation rate spike in the state, with both groups seeing a 2.0 percentage point increase in graduation rates in comparison to the 2022 class. CTE concentrators graduated at some of the highest rates among all student groups at 95% for 2023, a mark bested only by talented and gifted students, who graduated at a 96.3% clip in 2023.

Among ethnic groups, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders saw the largest jump in graduation rates, rising by 1.3 percentage points when compared to 2022. Both white and multi-racial students saw a small 0.1 percentage point increase over 2022 graduation rates.

The 2023 graduation rates of first-time English learners, special education students and houseless students are the highest ever recorded.

There were some slight declines among student groups and ethnicities, however.

The largest dip in graduation rates was among American Indian/Alaska Native students, who saw a 0.7 percentage point drop in their graduation rates from 2022 to 2023. African American and female students experienced a 0.6 percentage point drop in their graduation rates from 2022 to 2023.

For the first time, Oregon reported graduation rates of military-connected students (86.7%), recently arrived students (63.3%) and students with experience in incarceration or detention (35.8%).