Oregon’s early 2025-26 school data show 2,655 more students attending regularly than a year earlier, extending the state’s attendance recovery to a third consecutive year. The improvement is real, but it does not mean the chronic-absence problem is solved: the most recent complete statewide comparison still places Oregon far above its pre-pandemic rate.
The governor’s office said Tuesday that the latest gain follows 3,111 additional regular attenders in 2024-25. Since Gov. Tina Kotek took office, the state says 23,426 more students meet the regular-attendance standard and the rate has risen by nearly six percentage points.
That standard matters. The Oregon Department of Education defines a regular attender as a student present for more than 90% of enrolled school days, among students enrolled for at least 75 days by the May snapshot. The new figures are an early statewide analysis; detailed 2025-26 school and district files were not part of the announcement.
State officials describe attendance as an academic warning signal: regular attendance in the early grades is associated with stronger reading performance, while absenteeism by middle school can indicate a higher risk of leaving high school. That makes the new count more than a participation statistic, even though the release does not establish what caused the statewide improvement.
The remaining gap
The last fully documented statewide baseline remains sobering. A legislative staff summary for House Bill 4154 reports that 33.5% of Oregon students were chronically absent in 2024-25, compared with 20.4% in 2018-19 before the pandemic. In practical terms, roughly one student in three was missing at least 10% of the school year at the latest complete count.
Progress has also varied sharply by district. An independent analysis of Oregon’s published attendance files found that Portland Public Schools cut chronic absence by 4.4 percentage points in 2024-25, to 32.5%, the largest improvement among districts enrolling more than 10,000 students. Yet six of the state’s 10 largest districts worsened that year, underscoring why a statewide average can hide local setbacks.
What changes this school year
Oregon is moving from a largely annual view of attendance to more frequent public reporting. HB 4154 requires ODE to publish quarterly attendance data beginning in 2026-27, using information districts already submit for average daily membership. The measure had minimal projected fiscal impact because the reporting stream already exists.
More frequent releases should let districts, families and lawmakers see problems sooner rather than waiting until after a school year ends. They will not, by themselves, remove the barriers the state identifies—transportation, health-care access and housing instability—but they should make it easier to distinguish a broad trend from a school- or district-specific emergency.
For parents, the immediate takeaway is narrower than the celebratory headline: statewide attendance is moving in the right direction, while the scale and distribution of chronic absence still require close attention. The first quarterly reports will be the next test of whether the early 2025-26 improvement carried into the current school year.
