Salem high school students are regaining some ground lost during the pandemic, with more of this year’s sophomore class on track to graduate on time.
Numbers released last week by the Oregon Department of Education show 78% of the 3,195 freshmen enrolled in Salem-Keizer Public Schools last year are on track, meaning they’ve completed one quarter of required credits to earn a diploma.
That’s up substantially from last year’s numbers, when just 70% of freshmen were on track to graduate, but still below the pre-pandemic rate of 85% in 2019. (Data was not collected in 2020).
Statewide, 83% of Oregon freshmen were on track to graduate in 2022, compared with 85% in 2019.
Larry Ramirez, the high school director for the district, said the numbers are an encouraging sign, though they show more work still needs to be done.
“We’re not exactly where we want to be, but I am happy with the improvement, I’m happy with the focus in our schools,” he said in an interview Thursday.
While the district still has wide gaps along demographic lines in both graduation readiness and graduation rates, in general the data shows those gaps are no worse now than they were before the pandemic.
The drop in graduation readiness in 2021 concerned district officials in part because groups of students who have historically had lower graduation rates, including Pacific Islanders, students with disabilities and English learners, posted larger declines.
This year’s data shows those trends starting to reverse. Groups of students that posted the largest declines in 2021 saw some of the largest gains in 2022, though not across the board.
Just 57% of American Indian freshmen were on track to graduate in 2022, and 74% of Black students. Both numbers are down from 2021.
About 1% of district students are Black and another 1% are American Indian, so it’s more common for numbers to fluctuate significantly year to year.
Latino and white students regained much of the ground lost in 2021. More Pacific Islander students were on track in 2022 than pre-pandemic.
(Graphic by Rachel Alexander/Salem Reporter)
The improvements are true for individual high schools as well. North Salem and McKay high schools – the two comprehensive district high schools with the largest share of low-income students, students of color and students learning English – regained much of the ground they lost in 2021.
(Graphic by Rachel Alexander/Salem Reporter)
It’s still unclear how much the drop in students passing courses needed to graduate will impact Salem-Keizer’s graduation numbers for the class of 2023 and beyond.
Oregon students need 24 credits to graduate from high school. Students in the Salem-Keizer School District take eight classes per semester, each worth half a credit, so have the opportunity to earn 32 credits over the course of high school.
Ramirez said that gives students some wiggle room to bounce back from failing classes as freshmen and still graduate on time.
“Not that we want to have failures but there is a little bit of cushion,” he said.
In addition to summer and online credit recovery, Ramirez said high schools have changed how they offer credit recovery classes so students can more efficiently make up work they failed the first time around.
A student who needs to make up multiple classes can enroll in a credit recovery course taught by a teacher certified in multiple subjects. In that class, they can make up just the lessons or standards they missed, rather than having to re-take the whole course. That means a student could get credit for multiple classes they failed in a semester’s worth of work.
Ramirez said that’s important because not every student is able to come into school on weekends, evenings or over the summer to make up classes.
“You don’t have to count on kids getting a ride or kids coming in the summer,” he said.
The state data also shows absenteeism spiked during the pandemic. The share of students attending class regularly — at least 90% of the time — declined by 15 to 20 percentage points at most schools during the 2021-22 school year, compared to 2019-20 — the last year the state collected such data.
High schools had by far the lowest attendance rates, with just 35% of McKay students attending class regularly. West Salem High School had the highest regular attender rate among high schools — 62%.
Illness was a major contributor to higher absentee rates, particularly after winter break when the omicron variant of Covid swept through schools, leading to more students and staff out sick.
Ramirez said students choosing not to attend because they’d gotten out of the habit during online school also played a role.
This year, attendance numbers are improving, Ramirez said. In the first 40 days of school, an average of 88% of district students were in class daily, compared to about 93% during the 2018-19 school year.
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for a decade. Outside of work, she’s a skater and board member with Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and can often be found with her nose buried in a book.
