Kotek Points to New Reforms as Oregon Schools Confront Lagging Scores, Absenteeism and Questions Over Priorities

Oregon — Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek faced a pointed question about the state’s education record during the first gubernatorial debate of the 2026 campaign: Why has increased spending not produced better academic results?

After Kotek discussed recently enacted accountability measures and efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism, Oregon Journalism Project reporter Nigel Jaquiss followed up: “Governor, I don’t believe you’ve answered the question. More money, worse results. Why?”

Kotek acknowledged the problem.

She was “not satisfied” with Oregon’s educational outcomes, she said, while arguing that the state is beginning to see improvements and should continue approaches that are showing results. OPB’s coverage of the Oct. 1 gubernatorial debate

The exchange highlighted one of the central questions surrounding Oregon education. The state has substantially increased spending over the past decade, yet national and state assessments show reading and mathematics performance below earlier levels. At the same time, Oregon has recorded its highest four-year graduation rate, begun seeing modest early-literacy improvements and adopted new accountability measures.

The causes of Oregon’s academic performance are more difficult to isolate. The past several years have included learning disruptions following covid response policies, persistent absenteeism, comparatively low instructional time, changes to graduation requirements and significant changes in curriculum, teacher training and state education policy.

Critics have also questioned whether some state education initiatives have received sufficient evaluation of their costs and academic effectiveness. Those criticisms raise questions about priorities, but available evidence does not establish that any one of those policies caused Oregon’s academic decline.

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Spending rose. Academic performance did not keep pace.

Oregon’s increased investment in education began well before Kotek became governor in January 2023. She served as Oregon House speaker from 2013 until 2022, a period that included passage of the 2019 Student Success Act.

The law established a corporate activity tax to support education. The Oregon Department of Education says the Student Success Act was expected, when fully implemented, to invest more than $2 billion every two years in early learning and K-12 education, including money for the State School Fund, Student Investment Account and other programs.

Funding has continued growing. The Legislature approved a $11.4 billion State School Fund for 2025-27, an increase of approximately $1.16 billion, or 11.4%, from the legislatively approved 2023-25 budget. Including local revenues, ODE estimates school formula funding at approximately $16.7 billion for the current biennium.

Researchers at Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab have also examined the relationship between Oregon spending and achievement. Its Oregon return-on-investment analysis tracks inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending alongside National Assessment of Educational Progress results.

The academic trend remains a problem.

On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, Oregon fourth graders averaged 207 in reading, compared with 214 nationally. Only 27% reached the NAEP proficient level. The Nation’s Report Card Oregon results

Oregon fourth graders averaged 229 in mathematics, compared with 237 nationally. Those scores were also below Oregon’s pre-pandemic performance. The Nation’s Report Card mathematics results

State assessments show modest recent movement but not a broad return to earlier achievement levels. ODE’s 2024-25 Statewide Report Card reported proficiency remaining below half of students in English language arts and near one-third in mathematics.

Kotek does have evidence for one part of her debate response: early literacy.

An ODE report on the Early Literacy Success Initiative found third-grade English language arts proficiency increased by approximately one percentage point in 2024-25, while 66 districts improved third-grade proficiency by at least three percentage points. ODE cautioned that multiple factors could have contributed to the improvement.

The result is therefore mixed: Oregon has recent evidence of improvement in early literacy and incremental gains in mathematics, but overall proficiency remains low and national assessments show substantial losses from earlier performance.

Oregon is graduating more students

Graduation rates have moved in the opposite direction.

Oregon’s four-year graduation rate reached a record 83% for the Class of 2025, representing more than 500 additional graduates, according to the Oregon Department of Education. But Oregon’s graduation requirements also changed during the period in which graduation rates increased.

Senate Bill 744, passed in 2021, suspended the requirement that students demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing and applied mathematics through Oregon’s Assessment of Essential Skills as a condition for receiving a diploma. Other requirements, including required course credits, remained in place.

Kotek, then House speaker, supported the legislation. Gov. Kate Brown signed it into law.

The suspension was initially temporary, but the State Board of Education subsequently extended it. ODE’s current Essential Skills graduation requirements page says the assessment requirement remains suspended through the 2027-28 school year, while other graduation requirements remain in effect.

The policy change does not establish that removing the assessment requirement caused graduation rates to rise. Students must still complete Oregon’s other diploma requirements. But it means recent graduation rates are being achieved under different proficiency requirements than those governing earlier classes.

That distinction is important when graduation rates and academic proficiency are considered together: Oregon is awarding diplomas to a larger share of students while standardized assessments continue to show that substantial numbers have not reached state or national proficiency benchmarks.

Pandemic losses have proved difficult to recover

The state’s academic decline cannot be separated from COVID-19 and the disruption of in-person education. Gov. Kate Brown, rather than Kotek, exercised the executive authority under which Oregon schools closed in spring 2020. Reopening nevertheless became a legislative dispute while Kotek was House speaker.

Republican lawmakers, including Christine Drazan and Rep. Vikki Breese-Iverson, sought legislation in 2021 requiring schools to return to full-time, in-person instruction for the following school year. Republicans later attempted unsuccessfully to force a House vote on reopening while lawmakers considered the state school budget. The academic effects have persisted.

Stanford economist Eric Hanushek has estimated that pandemic-era achievement losses could reduce lifetime earnings for the average affected U.S. student by roughly 5% to 6% if the lost learning is not recovered, with the estimated effect varying substantially among states.

More recent Oregon-specific work by Hanushek also places the decline within a longer trend: Oregon achievement had begun weakening before COVID-19 and had not returned to earlier performance levels by 2024.

The Education Recovery Scorecard, produced by researchers at Harvard and Stanford, likewise found Oregon substantially behind its pre-pandemic trajectory, with losses approaching three-quarters of a school year in mathematics and roughly two-thirds of a year in reading during the period studied.

That makes the pandemic a major part of Oregon’s academic story, but not a complete explanation for the longer-term trend.

Absenteeism and instructional time present additional problems

Money and curriculum are not the only factors that could explain Oregon’s academic performance.

Students must be in school for instruction to have an effect, and Oregon continues to struggle with both attendance and instructional time.

An Oregon Health Authority report found chronic absenteeism reached 36.1% in 2021-22, 38.1% in 2022-23 and 34.3% in 2023-24. National rates during those years were approximately 28%, 25% and 22%, respectively. Oregon Health Authority report on youth and chronic absenteeism

Instructional time presents another distinction.

Brown University researcher Matthew Kraft has ranked Oregon 47th nationally in time spent in school, according to OPB reporting on Oregon instructional time. Oregon establishes minimum instructional hours but, unlike most states, does not require a particular number of school days.

An analysis cited by OPB estimated Oregon’s average school year at approximately 165 days.

Kotek highlighted absenteeism during the debate, arguing that Oregon needs better tracking and stronger district efforts to get students back into classrooms. OPB debate coverage

These factors complicate attempts to attribute Oregon’s results to any single policy or officeholder.

Scholarly groups question Oregon’s education priorities and standards

Oregon’s academic struggles have also prompted criticism over the state’s education priorities and whether some policies are supported by sufficient evidence.

In a 2023 joint review of Oregon’s graduation policies, the Oregon Association of Scholars and Save Oregon Schools challenged the Oregon Department of Education report produced under Senate Bill 744. The groups argued that ODE made unsupported assumptions about causes of racial disparities, misrepresented some research and failed to maintain the political neutrality required by the legislation. Those conclusions represent the organizations’ assessment of the state report.

OAS subsequently broadened its criticism in Politics Over Performance, examining DEI, Transformative Social Emotional Learning, teacher training and district staffing. Among 15 districts for which it obtained usable staffing information, OAS identified 62 positions it classified as primarily DEI- or SEL-related, totaling approximately $5.8 million in annual salaries. The report questioned whether sufficient evidence exists that those initiatives improve academic outcomes, but acknowledged that its analysis could not establish whether DEI staffing affected student performance and said more rigorous research would be required.

Similar concerns emerged during Oregon’s revision of its social science standards. In a 2024 letter to ODE, National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood and Civics Alliance Executive Director David Randall argued that the draft placed too much emphasis on identity, inequality and political activism and too little on historical content, urging the state to replace it with more content-focused standards.

ODE presents the approach differently, describing its 2024 Oregon Social Science Standards as incorporating historically underrepresented perspectives while emphasizing inquiry, critical thinking, communication and civic participation. The State Board adopted the standards in 2024, with implementation beginning in the 2026-27 school year.

The debate question remains difficult to answer with one explanation

Jaquiss’ question to Kotek — “More money, worse results. Why?” — captures a measurable disconnect, but not necessarily its cause.

Oregon is spending considerably more on public education than it did a decade ago. The Student Success Act added a major new revenue stream, the State School Fund has continued growing, and the state has made additional targeted investments such as its early-literacy initiative.

Yet broad academic improvement has not followed at the same scale.

Oregon’s fourth-grade NAEP scores remain below national averages and substantially below their pre-pandemic levels. State assessments show fewer than half of students proficient in English language arts and roughly one-third proficient in mathematics. Chronic absenteeism remains substantially above the national rate, while Oregon ranks near the bottom nationally in instructional time.

At the same time mathematics proficiency has shown incremental improvement and the first full year of Early Literacy Success grants coincided with measurable improvement in third-grade reading.

Kotek’s argument that Oregon is beginning to see progress therefore has supporting evidence. So does the premise behind the question she faced: the scale of improvement in academic outcomes has not matched the scale of Oregon’s increased investment.

The available evidence does not provide a single explanation. Instead, it points to overlapping issues including pandemic learning loss, absenteeism, limited instructional time, persistent achievement gaps, changing graduation standards and continuing questions about how effectively Oregon converts increased education spending into measurable student learning.

For Kotek, who held significant influence over education policy first as House speaker and now as governor, the debate puts those trends directly into the 2026 campaign. The underlying policy question is broader than the election: Which of Oregon’s growing education investments are measurably improving student learning, and which are not?

This article was written by Shawnn Hartley, M.A.

Shawnn’s journalism and research with Right Now Oregon focuses on civic affairs, public policy, and community impact stories. With a background in social services, program management and evaluation, data analysis, and state government, he focuses on clear, evidence-based reporting addressing complex issues.

Note: Shawnn previously served as the President of the Oregon Association of Scholars, an affiliate of the National Association of Scholars, and is an active member of NAS.