Students in Salem schools aren’t catching up on reading and math skills after sharp declines during the Covid pandemic, new state data released Thursday shows.
The annual data shows the share of local students who can read and write, do math, and understand scientific concepts at their grade level remains stagnant.
In Salem, that means just 24% of third graders tested in the spring were proficient in English, compared to 39% for the state.
In math, one quarter of local third graders were proficient – a slight improvement from the year before. Statewide, the number was 40%.
Numbers and trends varied significantly among local schools and across grades. But the overall picture shows Salem students last year performed slightly worse on average in all three subjects compared to 2023. The district is Oregon’s second-largest, with about 36,000 students.
“These results are sobering. And not only are we not on track, we are actively moving in the wrong direction,” Superintendent Andrea Castañeda of the Salem-Keizer School District said in an interview Wednesday.
Pre-pandemic, in 2019, about 44% of district students tested proficient in English compared to 31% in the latest results. In math, 33% were proficient in 2019. That stands at 20% this year.
In many of Salem’s most challenged schools, the latest test results are worse.
Four Corners Elementary, an east Salem school, records one of the district’s highest student poverty rates, around 90%. There, just 7% of third graders scored proficient in English this spring.
Hallman, Highland, Kennedy, Lamb and Scott elementaries, where poverty is high, also posted English rates below 10%.

Quick fixes unlikely
The latest figures come from state standardized tests that students take in the spring in third, fourth, fifth, eighth and eleventh grade.
Results are supposed to give a broad picture of how schools and districts are performing. District and state leaders use the results to guide educational policy and identify groups of students who aren’t being well served.
Principals and classroom teachers generally rely on smaller and more frequent in-class tests to identify struggling students and adjust instruction to help them.
In a news conference Wednesday, Charlene Williams, the state schools chief, said the results demanded “urgency.”
“This isn’t normal. This is not where we want to be by any stretch of the imagination,” Williams said.
Education leaders outlined multiple state efforts underway to improve the state’s early literacy education, an effort Gov. Tina Kotek has made a centerpiece of her education policy.
Those include a state grant program for school district early literacy initiatives that train teachers and use proven curriculum to help kids learn to read.
“We hope to see long-term gains that will happen as a result of these actions. This will take some time to show in statewide averages,” said Andrea Lockard, the education department’s assessment director.
Kindergarteners who benefit from the initial round of grants will take state tests for the first time in the spring of 2027.
Early literacy focuses on kindergarten through second grade, when students are learning the basics of reading.
Efforts to beef up those programs will do little to change the trajectory of students who are currently in late elementary, middle and high school.
In response to repeated questions from reporters, state education leaders provided few specifics about what they intend to do to improve results for older students who have only a few years left in Oregon’s schools. They also wouldn’t answer in detail how they will hold local school leaders accountable for improving results.
Marc Siegel, the department’s spokesman, said in a follow-up email that accountability options “range from technical assistance to professional learning or coaching to corrective action, and ultimately directing or withholding funds.”

Williams and other executives emphasized that state tests go beyond demonstrating that a student can read. Tests in third grade ask students to analyze text and show they can research information and listen, for example.
But the eleventh grade test measures whether students can read, write and analyze text at the level required to move on to college or a career without remedial education, education leaders said.
By that measure, most Oregon juniors – 55% – aren’t ready for their next step. The numbers are worse for many groups of students, including those living in poverty, Latino students, students in foster care and those who have recently immigrated to the U.S.
About one in five high school juniors opt out of taking the state tests in Salem, meaning the results don’t provide a complete picture of the student body. Dan Farley, the state’s assistant superintendent of research and assessment, said the students who skip the tests are often high-performing and focus their time instead on exams for college credit, like Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate testing.
Castañeda acknowledged some students are leaving high school requiring remedial education in English and math, but said the high school data doesn’t paint an accurate picture of what’s happening in Salem.
She said nearly half of the district’s students are successfully taking college-level courses, and it’s difficult to square that success with state data showing just one in three district juniors are proficient in English.
“Very simply stated, there isn’t a lot of reason for 11th graders to look at that (state) assessment and think, ‘This is one of the most serious tests I’m going to take. I need to throw everything at it,’” she said.
Thursday’s data only has broad results for local schools. Data that sorts Salem students in groups, like disability or race, will be released later this fall.
Local literacy, curriculum efforts
In Salem, Castañeda said district initiatives underway to boost numbers include early literacy initiatives, updated curriculum and a focus on attendance.
Salem schools have persistently lagged behind in making sure the growing share of students who begin elementary school in Spanish, as well as their bilingual teachers, have access to quality lessons and materials. That’s started to shift recently.
Over the past two years, the district has adopted curriculum for several middle and high school subjects. The process will continue over the next four years, Castañeda said, include a new English and language arts curriculum for elementary schools — a key component of boosting reading abilities.
“We have curriculum that, in a few cases, is literally decades old. And this is not just a change in content. This is a change in culture for our district,” Castañeda said. “High quality instructional materials in teachers hands, and they know how to use them. It’s going to make a huge difference, over time in the quality and consistency of the experiences our teachers are having and our students are having.”

She said teachers are now receiving training across elementary schools in the “science of reading,” proven way to help all kids learn to read.
The district has used state grant money to pay an experienced teacher at each school to focus on reading instruction, helping other teachers tailor lessons and working with struggling students in small groups.
Castañeda said persistent challenges include attendance and funding. The share of students regularly missing school grew during Covid in Salem, Oregon and across the U.S.
It has yet to recover.
“If kids are not with us, they cannot learn from us. There is no escaping that basic fact,” Castañeda said.
The district last week launched an attendance campaign called Attendance Matters and is asking for parent and community support to make sure kids are in school.
Schools also need stable funding, she said. Deep budget cuts last year mean schools now have fewer teachers, classroom assistants and other employees helping students learn to read.
In addition to boosting state money, Castañeda echoed a point she’s made repeatedly this fall: legislators need to fund schools to focus on basics and stop creating new mandates and special projects.
“If there is a revolving door of new policy expectations, of new curricular requirements, of new demands on our system, it is very hard to focus on the fundamentals,” she said.
Salem’s results put the district far behind a policy the school board adopted last fall to evaluate the superintendent.
That policy set a target of improving third grade reading this year by one percentage point, to 27%. Instead, the number fell to 24%.
Board Chair Cynthia Richardson, a retired school district administrator, said in a statement to Salem Reporter that Salem needs more opportunities for teachers to learn effective methods to teach reading, and a curriculum that’s shown to work.
She said the board would keep its goal of improving the share of third graders showing proficiency to 34% by the spring of 2028.
“Our results policy stands and our job is to change the trajectory. That’s why we adopted a results policy so that at any given time you know if you are on track and if you are making progress,” she said.
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.