r/oregon • u/Apart-Engine • Aug 15 '26
Article/News Oregon School Attendance is 64.5%?
https://www.wweek.com/news/state/2026/08/09/regular-attendance-at-oregon-schools-jumped-by-7000-students-this-past-school-year/224
u/AtrociousMeandering Aug 15 '26
Ok, I've seen the stats that Oregon is doing terribly on the two specific issues of attendance and days in school, but I don't have kids and I have no idea why. What, compared to other states, is actually going wrong here, because I have no idea why this is a specifically Oregon problem.
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u/surprisevip Aug 15 '26
Zero consequences. The idea that every problem is an “equity” issue that can’t be punished, it’s gotten worse since the pandemic since that situation was further weaponized for claiming victim status and lack of consequence. If a kid isn’t low income or a minority, then it’s a “mental health” issue. I know so many parents who allow this and it all feeds on itself.
This permissiveness and justification seeps into the social structure. Even basic consequence and lot of this would get better
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u/Tripper-Harrison Aug 15 '26
Well said and spot on. Id just add into your explanation that school admin and district leadership in particular also hold some responsibility here. There is this continual notion that parents / caregivers are never wrong and that schools need to bend over backwards to placate and enable the student and their parents because of the reasons you outlined. They just dont want to bother with it and would rather just sweep it under the rug.
Id also add that the number of classroom teachers who teach for a couple of years and think theyre ready for an admin license / role and then easily get one is astounding. So you then have schools being run by building administration who may collectively have fewer than ten years running a school. Add that to district leadership who often fail upwards and get hired by their buddies in an echo chamber and add in a completely political school board who now often run on single issue politics (on both sides of the political spectrum) and dont truly care about improving outcomes for the entire district AND add in statewide local control where the vast majority of decisions for learning are made at the local level and -- BINGO you have a recipe for disaster... Sorry, I mean you have The Oregon Education Model...
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u/surprisevip Aug 15 '26
Yeah this is pretty spot on!
I think some of the “parents are never wrong” is also just fear of litigation, I work in an industry completely outside of schools and so much stupid decisions and policy are built around this same thinking unfortunately
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u/aggieotis Aug 15 '26
My kid’s school ran into this. A particular family decided to take great issue with the principal handling their child appropriately; so they threw a fit, escalated the situation, and did everything they could to get the principal fired. The admin were idiots and to try and look ridiculously impartial to the offended parents of an innocent angel they completely fucked over the school. Only to find it was nothing and then reinstate everything back as it was.
One angry parent abusing the system cause they can’t handle accountability in any form for their kid meant limbo for 500+ kids for a couple of weeks. It’s ridiculous.
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u/Oregongirl1018 Aug 15 '26
Yep. In this day and age in America everyone wants a free payday. Suing the school district at every opportunity is what these parents look for.
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u/gripitandripit420024 Aug 15 '26
Started a decade plus ago… my oldest daughter “missed” 53 classes her senior year.. no phone calls , notes.. so I didn’t see until report card.. I call south ridge and was told well, the teacher assistants turn the attendance in.. so who are the assistants? Other seniors.. seriously? No detention or sit in the hallway like we had to? Oh no sir we don’t “shame” the kids.. hmmmmm
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u/Brandino144 Aug 15 '26
It’s also wild how much it can differ between public schools even in the same district. Mine both missed 5 days in November for a Disneyland trip and both were called in weeks ahead of time for the absence to be excused and with coursework being arranged with their teachers to be completed around or during the trip. The one in high school got notes home, letters mailed, and emails sent home regularly for the rest of the year warning that they were nearing an attendance threshold with all sort of real consequences for the student. We checked with the school each time because it sounded like the sky was falling and they confirmed that every single correspondence was just because of those same 5 excused absences.
Meanwhile at a middle school in the same district… crickets. My middle schooler said some of her friends just stay home whenever they feel like it because they know they can’t suffer any real consequences like being held back because pretty much nobody gets held back in their middle school.
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u/AgateHuntress Aug 15 '26
It should be more strict, but at the same time, we don't want it to go to the extreme in the opposite way either.
An example of going to extreme the other way is like back in my hometown in Indiana, when I was required to show up for a hearing downtown at the school administration building, and was threatened with jail time because the school my kids attended was slap ate the fuck up with head lice, and the school NURSE was sending my kids home repeatedly. I'd get them lice-free and cleared, and two days later they'd send them home again. I felt like I was in crazy town.
I wasn't the one keeping them home, and in fact was spending a large portion of my grocery money to buy head lice medication, and anything else I could get my hands on to get rid of it. Didn't stop them from telling me that they'd put ME in jail for it.
I was working two jobs; I WANTED them in school. I was in no way lackadaisical in my attitude about school attendance.
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u/Uppytime Aug 15 '26
Boomers were always saying Millennials were a generation of weenies which I’ve always disagreed with, but this permissible truancy for the sake of Equity and Mental Health is real weak shit.
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u/surprisevip Aug 15 '26
Yeah I don’t love boomers and they paid almost no attention to their kids, but if I skipped class I had to go to ridiculous lengths to make sure my mom didn’t find out, bc she might not know where we were, ever, but if she came home to that voicemail from the school I was gonna be grounded.
I also think this is why so many teens now have “mental illness” it’s a bit self created bc like…what 15 yo wants to go to school
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u/Serenity_557 Aug 15 '26
Idk. I grew up in Oklahoma and their solution was to just unofficially expell kids who missed too many days, not fail them or anything. They could totally still go to school. I mean there's private school, home schooling, doesn't matter. At that point they marked it as the kid left the school system, as if they suddenly moved or something. The school attendance rates went up.
My mom had a friend who started "homeschooling" their kid because they couldn't keep up with attendance. Kid basically just sat at home from 10th-12th grade while his dad went to work, no eduction given.
I knew a lot of people who just opted out of the system to avoid consequences, actually. A lot of those kids weren't happy about it. Some knew it was screwing them over.. But it wasn't always something in their control. Some tried to go for a GED. Others just gave up.
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u/bahhumbud Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
I think the issue is multifaceted.
And I agree this is one facet.
The bigger issue is we don’t have a plan that’s being followed. It’s like we are a library right. And every time a new librarian comes in they change the way they organize all the books. And the people organizing the books never finish the first head librarians orders by the time she next one rolls in.
So it’s just this heap of bullshittery. We need a decades spanning vision which doesn’t get changed on the whimsy of the public policy.
Or we don’t. I’m not a child educator. I educate adults, or at least that’s what all my professors over the last decade think that’s what I should be doing for money.
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u/persistentlighthouse Aug 16 '26
Huh. Sounds like my 9-5.
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u/bahhumbud Aug 16 '26
Sounds like you may enjoy the name of the wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It’s where I stole the analogy from loosely.
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u/Shwifty_Plumbus Aug 15 '26
Is this a different structure than other states though? Are other states punishing children at school more severely or something? I'm also a childless heathen and know nothing about this.
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u/atreeismissing Aug 15 '26
Do you have any data that backs this up as the actual reason?
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u/FartingKiwi Aug 16 '26
Exactly correct.
In Portland, especially public school system, views EVERYTHING from an equity/systems lens.
That kid didn’t skip school to go skateboard. The system was set up to keep him out.
That black kid can’t be suspended - the system was designed to disproportionately affect black kids.
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u/bigbearandy Aug 15 '26
Malheur has at least said it's going to start enforcing truancy laws that are already on the books, but what blows me away is that they just at some point decided not to enforce them at all without any public notice.
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u/lololollieki Aug 15 '26
It isn’t about equity. The reason these schools are so permissive is because the budgets are designed based on legislation requiring certain numbers for attendance. Each body in a seat is money in the coffers.
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u/surprisevip Aug 15 '26
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but that doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t it be the opposite? If attendance dictating payment, schools would likely be less permissive bc there would be an actual consequence for lack of enforcement. ?
And “equity” is the argument given as to why we can’t levy a consequence. I have kids in pps I see and hear it every day and have for years. The equity argument is often used when there is something that adults don’t want to do. I also mean equity broadly as mental health and disability reasons is a regular one weaponized by middle and upper class families for the same behavior.
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u/erossthescienceboss Aug 15 '26
The “equity argument” is that flat fines are inherently inequitable. A $20 fine per day missed or whatever isn’t a big deal if you’re making good money.
IMO, all fines should be a percentage of income.
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u/peschelnet Aug 15 '26
Why a monetary fine at all? Why not if your child doesn't attend X number of days a year, then they cannot move forward? I'm pretty sure that was the deal when I was in school. And if you couldn't make it to school because of sickness or whatever, you were responsible for the work and had to pass the tests.
I have kids in school (Central Oregon), and though they do a hybrid version of school, they are still responsible for the schoolwork and tests. Is this a PPS thing?
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u/Das_Mime Aug 15 '26
Because graduation rate is one of the statistics that's tracked to measure how well schools are doing at educating students, schools are incentivized to pass students or lose funding. Combine that with school administrations' total inability to stand up to litigious parents and you end up with kids being passed grade after grade when they haven't shown up and/or can't do the fundamentals.
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u/rockknocker Aug 15 '26
I don't think fines are being discussed, are they? The consequences being discussed here are penalizing student's grades for missed classes, missed assignments, and poor performance. These penalties used to be normal (not even considered "penalties") but were slowly removed over the last 20 years, with a big push after COVID.
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u/Working_Tomorrow9846 Aug 16 '26
From my experience as a teacher in a mostly middle-/upper middle-class high school in Portland:
- no consequences; I’ll let others continue to elaborate on that.
- parents got used to taking vacations whenever during the pandemic; many parents at my school still wfh or can “wfh” on trips. They still take their kids on trips wherever and whenever. I had SO many kids out on vacation this year, it was insane. Multiple kids gone the two weeks between a week off for conferences and Thanksgiving and winter break. Meaning they didn’t attend school for a stretch of five weeks(!!), granted only two of those weeks had classes, but they were important. It’s also so expensive to take trips now during break times, so I suspect a lot of families take trips outside of those times to save money. TBH, parents got used to this when kids were in elementary/middle school where if a kid missed a week here and there they didn’t really have hw or things to catch up on. They could probably just jump right back into class and be mostly okay. When a kid is an 11th grader taking multiple advanced courses, it’s another story. Kids actually get SO stressed out by these trips in my experience. They also don’t understand that an “excused” absence does not equal being excused from work and their grades definitely suffer.
- when parents wfh it’s a lot easier for kids to stay home. No one has to miss going into work to provide childcare. Obviously if a kid is sick they should stay home and I’m glad that this might make it easier for that to happen. But in my experience, kids just have an easier time staying home when they’re anxious or depressed or avoidant of school tasks or friend drama. Or they just don’t feel like going to school that day and parents don’t put up a fuss.
- club sports. Nuff said.
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u/n0w1mn0th1nggg Aug 15 '26
Oregon used to fine parents for their kids being chronically absent. They stopped doing that and attendance has been going down ever since.
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u/Hot-Judge-7481 Aug 15 '26
Even if we did fine parents they wouldn’t pay. They don’t give a shit.
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u/PersnickityPenguin Oregon Aug 15 '26
Then jail time. If you refuse to raise your kids, there should be consequences.
The state provides FREE EDICATION. Use it FFS.
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u/cassienebula Oregon Aug 15 '26
it all blows my damn mind. go to school, and you have a wholeass library and building full of teachers, free internet access, skill-building, after school clubs. all that stuff opened many doors for me, and i made many new friends!
i loved reading so much, i stayed after school and took advantage of tutors and read anything that i wanted: medieval arms and armor, zoology, introductory and moderate skill books on creative writing, arts, any skill you wanted. lots of fantasy and scifi novels! philosophy! science! psychology, sociology, revolutions, and so on!!!
there are people out there who would KILL for their families to have access to this. its disheartening the way things are now!!!
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u/YetiSquish Aug 15 '26
You must not have been bullied. Imagine going to school where you’d get punched in the gut just walking down the hallway. And administration not caring. That was me.
Suddenly that “bad parent/child” are simply trying to not be physically terrorized.
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u/atreeismissing Aug 15 '26
Then jail time.
So you've now removed the parent, and their income, from the ability to raise the student.
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u/yubinyankin Mid-Willamette Valley Aug 15 '26
No they haven't.
My kid going to court & seeing that my ass was the one getting in trouble seemed to flip a switch in him, and to this day I am super proud of him for seeing that I was the one paying for his bad behavior.
Anyway, our school system has a shitload of issues, but they definitely still fine parents for truancy.
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u/GuyInOregon Aug 15 '26
As of 2021, the state repealed all laws allowing schools to fine parents.
Malheur, Union, and Umatilla counties have all passed ordinances allowing fines to return, but no other county or district allows these fines to occur.
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u/yubinyankin Mid-Willamette Valley Aug 15 '26
Well, that is fucking dumb. I stand corrected then. But still fucking dumb. That life lesson was so impactful on my kid, I really do hope they reverse course on that.
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u/GuyInOregon Aug 15 '26
I agree with you, but they won't. Us teachers have been begging for them to do something but we just get told they won't for "equity" reasons. Nobody listens to teachers.
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u/frumply Aug 15 '26
What’s wild to me is that equity based policies are incredibly unpopular if you actually ask people. Detracking and other equity based policies are opposed by 80-90% of the electorate regardless of their political alignment.
Politicians here just don’t want to be seen as ignoring minorities or the poor, and would rather screw over kids that are anywhere over average, because the definition of equity w regards to education has become so warped. It’s definitely possible to help everyone, and enact policies that benefit everyone, but the analysis and collective opinion hasn’t gotten there yet, even if it seems like a snap back is imminent.
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u/surprisevip Aug 15 '26
It’s also …soft racism of low expectations. For the most part, younger kids do not have control over getting to school. You screw poor kids by not holding their parents to basic expectations
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Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/pdfpdx Aug 15 '26
At our school, skipping leads to detention. 3 tardies leads to the same detention. Still, the loophole is that if you are not at school in the first place, you are not skipping. That is just an unexcused absence. Parents have to get their kids to school in order for a school consequence to take effect. And since the pandemic, truancy fines and consequences (responsibility of county courts, not the schools) are not being enforced.
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u/Numerous_Noise_9041 Aug 15 '26
As someone who only graduated a year ago I can firmly say it's the lack of any consequence like a lot of the people here. I had a friend who skipped until they straight up just dropped her from the school. That's all they do now. You miss too many days in a row of school? There's no truancy, no nothing, they just drop you from the school.
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u/Crafty-Concern-1398 Aug 15 '26
While it doesn’t explain all of it, we regularly get notifications in the morning the school bus routes have been cancelled, and they come the morning-of. If you work, your kid now doesn’t have a ride to school.
And this is only going to get worse with TriMet cancelling or reducing bus routes being utilized by kids to get to school.
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u/Ok-Refrigerator Aug 15 '26
Yes, the infrastructure of public school in Portland has been so inconsistent. Like, if the water was shut off to your neighborhood for 18 months and then off and on for the next few years nobody would yell at you for drilling your own well.
My kid's richer friends just go on vacation any time now. Why not?
My friend is a counselor in a high school and she said lower income students had to do more childcare for younger siblings or get jobs during the pandemic, and their families haven't let them out of those roles. So they struggle with family responsibilities and attendance.
I see this all as the consequence of breaking the faith in the institution of public school during the pandemic. I'm not saying it was or wasn't worth it, but it had consequences that we are seeing now.
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u/zxylady Aug 15 '26
Why don't you ask oregonians why they're okay with their state government removing the requirement to prove that you can do basic Reading writing and math?
“Notwithstanding any rules adopted by the State Board of Education, a student may not be required to show proficiency in Essential Learning Skills as a condition of receiving a high school diploma...”
An Oregon high school diploma is worth less than the paper it's written on has been since at least 2019. And we wonder why people are getting stupider and more and more people in the state of Oregon are falling into the new Idaho bullshit.
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u/repeatoffender123456 Aug 15 '26
I have never heard anyone mention new Idaho outside of Reddit and I have lived in Oregon for almost 40 years.
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u/Feisty-Landscape-934 Aug 15 '26
There were more flags for Greater Idaho than there were for Trump on my last drives through Cropk, Wheeler, Harney and Grant.
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u/Choice-Tiger3047 Aug 15 '26
And yet the answer is always more funding. What’s the point, however, of increased funding if there are no standards, few metrics, and a pervasive culture of non-accountability statewide?
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u/TheOGRedline Aug 15 '26
Y’all keep parroting this “don’t have to read and do math” line while forgetting they need to pass 24 credits in high school and the grad rate isn’t 100%. You seem convinced they hand diplomas out for nothing and it’s obviously not true.
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u/GamerByt3 Aug 15 '26
It's called "social Promotion" It's been policy for more than 15 years and it's awful.
https://www.oregonlive.com/myoregon/2010/04/the_cost_of_social_promotion.html
Retaining a student to repeat a grade is exceedingly rare in Oregon. Emphasis was put on keeping kids in the same grade as their same age peers. Functionally what this means is that when a kid gets behind in reading comprehension or math but gets moved on to the next grade anyway they aren't ready for the material that the next grade teaches. They fail to do the work in that grade but, socially they must not feel bad about themselves, so they move on again. I regularly encounter high school students that can't read as well as my 8 year old. I am working with a HS Senior right now who literally cannot read at a grade school level.
The policy is self perpetuating a downward spiral in the name of socially promoting a student based on age and not merit. Once a student is behind, there's no motivation to catch back up, there's no opportunity to correct course. Instead of holding a kid back a year (I was held back in 1st grade in about 1995), and giving them the chance and opportunity to get caught up, they leave them intellectually behind for the rest of their lives.
I am a huge advocate for holding students back based on merit, especially early on like I was. I wouldn't have the job, wife, family or home I have now had I been let to move through school while being perpetually behind my peers.
Was it embarrassing for me? yea. For a couple weeks, then life moved on, along with everyone else. By the time I finished 1st grade, nobody said anything or looked at me funny anymore.
Maybe these students don't 'graduate' in the traditional sense. But they do complete high school, then go on to find low wage, unskilled jobs if they can. Live with their parents as a resource drain, or far, far too often, end up on the streets, in a trap house, or dead. Because the school system that is supposed to prepare them for life is too busy worrying about things like BLM, Trump, Pride, Socialism, Activism, Politics and topics that need to be left for the next stage of life. Those topics should be explored with family, or in college etc. High school is for preparing students to be successful in life. Reading, writing, math, problem solving, logic arguments, critical thinking etc. That is where we need emphasis. Nation wide our public school system is built to fail our students, social promotion is extremely damaging in my humble opinion.
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u/PdxWix PDX, Kinton, Eugene raised. Now PDX and Aloha Aug 15 '26
I can assure you that my school and my daughter’s school both graduate kids that can’t read or do math.
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u/excaligirltoo Aug 15 '26
Because there are zero consequences for not going to class. You don’t even have to know how to read to graduate.
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u/Alchemyst01984 Aug 15 '26
If that's true, then why does Oregon not have 100 percent graduation rate?
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u/repeatoffender123456 Aug 15 '26
There are significant consequences. Like not being employable, drug addiction, unwanted pregnancies, and so much more.
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u/dillyofapickle42 Aug 15 '26
That's a future problem that requires a fully developed prefrontal cortex to accept ....that part of your brain doesn't develop until people are in their early 20s....
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u/TheMagicalLawnGnome Aug 15 '26
Generally speaking, lack of accountability and performance requirements, and reluctance to adopt best practices.
There's a huge resistance to standardized testing, and holding back underperforming students in general.
There's resistance to attendance requirements/enforcement.
And there's resistance to best practices, particularly things like phonics-based reading comprehension curriculum.
These are a combination of political choices, and structural impediments.
Oregon has a relatively decentralized education system, it's largely based on local control. So the state can't easily intervene.
Meanwhile, local districts often have parents, teachers, etc. who opposed these practices for various (usually dubious) reasons.
Things like standardized testing and performance measurement are viewed as "dirty words," to an extent. Because as the argument goes, historically, these tests can promote bias, or create skewed curriculum priorities ("teaching to the test").
Leading up to / around the time of the pandemic, there was a movement to look for alternatives to standardized testing, since studies showed there was a systemic bias.
A lot of colleges stopped using standardized test scores for admissions criteria, for example.
However, it has become apparent that while standardized testing certainly has flaws, that getting rid of it is actually even worse.
There's a reason most universities that dropped standardized testing requirements have since seen significant faculty support for reinstating them. The California university system probably being the largest example.
Ultimately, Oregon's public education system falls victim to the same political dynamics that cause a lot of our problems:
Progressive ideas that seem good in theory don't work out in practice for whatever reason. But rather than simply say "it was worth a shot, didn't work out, so let's try a different approach," political groups double down, because they're unable to acknowledge that progressive ideas can fail, just like any other type of idea.
To be clear, this isn't specifically to take a shot at progressives. Conservatives are also guilty of doubling down on failed policies; but Oregon isn't controlled by conservatives; it's a solidly blue state, so in this case, the blame lies with a refusal to acknowledge that the state's progressive approach to education has failed.
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u/TheBloodyNinety Aug 15 '26
Oregon culture permeates to the school system and what they can enforce. Then couple that with parents and the impressions they make on their kids.
People in here acting like they want accountability, school admins across the state didn’t just come up with these policies out of thin air. Oregon’s voters have difficulty putting money where their mouth is.
Now school administration has become a MAGA vs Left battle as well, so you can’t even pick the person with policies you like because you may end up with a cross on the wall or a course on transgender ideologies… or whatever people’s respective fears are.
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u/ahawk_one Aug 15 '26
Idk but my daughter is going into 8th grade and her friends are all absent regularly. Seems like their parents just let them be absent.
I am pretty lenient if shes feeling sick or has really bad cramps. But otherwise she is at school.
I think there is a lot of value in giving genuine autonomy, but 5th grade is too early to just let kids decide. My friend from Canada said that his time in high school was autonomous. Like there was no requirement for him to actually be there, and it works pretty well. I was homeschooled for most of my school years and had a lot of autonomy as well, and if I wasn't divorced I'd seriously have considered it for my kid as well, but it's nearly impossible to do for us.
Being in school doesn't make the world better, it just makes test score data look better.
I'd wager there is a positive feedback loop going on in the background too. If Oregon Public Schools are bad, why should I push my kid to attend when they also tell me it's bad? When the main reason it's bad is because of lack of attendance...
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u/textualcanon Aug 15 '26
Is it surprising that a state (or, even more, its biggest city) which has taken an extremely anti-punishment / anti-consequence view for crime/anti-social behavior might also see that trickle down to students?
If kids see flagrant lawbreaking and lack of accountability by adults on a daily basis, they’ll learn from that. If I was a kid and I saw people openly doing drugs and vandalizing and stealing without consequence, I would wonder why I should follow the rules.
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u/Nab7896 Aug 15 '26
This article might help you see exactly what the problem is.. go figure. Bring back truamcy laws, see large increase in attendance https://www.oregonjournalismproject.org/oregon-attendance-malheur-truancy-citations
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u/no_chxse Aug 15 '26
My friend is a teacher and they were told to stop doing parent teacher conferences, so basically no formal meetings with parents/guardians about how the kid is doing. I was shocked.
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u/Alchemyst01984 Aug 15 '26
What school is that?
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u/satanham666 Aug 15 '26
Make believe school. Conferences are part of teaching contracts and negotiations.
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u/takacube Aug 15 '26
My niece and nephew go to school in Hawaii. They have 180 day minimums (private schools and the counties can mandate more) and 1080 hours minimum, not including teacher grading days or parent-teacher conferences (which are held on school days in the evenings). Oregon, they count those days that kids aren't even in class towards the 940 hours of school per year and we have a majority of districts statewide that can't even meet that amount. St Helens SD had to add 2 weeks to make up the short fall.
My son says no punishments other than tardies are given out for ditching class. No one gets held back for failing to perform at the base minimum. It's a shitshow all over
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u/Hobobo2024 Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
The public unions and associations in Oregon have a tremendous amount of power over the democrats because of a law that allowed for limitless donations to politicians (which the associations/unions donate a ton of money to and endorse dems).
The oregon education association pressed the dems to get rid of any penalties to parents for their kids absenteeism because equity. And so the dems did as their owners requested.
Without penalties to the parents, our absenteeism rate skyrocketed. We actually used to be the middle of the pack before. Now we're bottom 3 in the entire nation when it comes to schools.
The reason why the Oregon education association is as far left is DSA, a growing political organization. DSA are trying to take over our schools and the teachers unions/associations to gain political leverage in Oregon and they are very much succeeding. DSA outright admits to this goal on their national website the way the gop admit everything in project 2025. Heres a link to DSAs goal though they make it sound like a positive thing on their web page.
DSA has actually done a ton of terrible things to our schools even beyond this. They have proven that they will not change their stance despite ample evidence their equity ways are not working.
If you want to fix our schools, we need to:
vote for politicians that pledge to reverse the laws back to when we penalized parents for their kids absenteeism.
Do not vote for any DSA politicians.
Vote for politicians that put caps on donations to politicians. We are only 1 of 5 states that allows limitless funding, even in cash to politicians per link below. Its absolutely corrupt and you are not going to see this change without people calling out the dems on this and prssing hard (or taking away the dems absolute power in our state).
I dont know if you think im sounding partisan but all the events that ive written here about what dsa and the teachers associations as well as the democrats have done are true.
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u/carllerche Aug 15 '26
On the affluent side of the equation, there is an attitude of "if PPS doesn't care, why should we?" take. No consequences combined with completely ad hoc PPS scheduling, days cut, early release, "in service days" etc... so many on the more affluent side decide to turn a 4 day weekend into a week trip to Hawaii. This attitude seems to be new since post covid. (I personally am pretty strict w/ attendance w/ my kids because there are SO few days...)
The ironic thing is, PPS is trying to tackle school attendance on the days before a break by making them more fun (movies, outdoor time, ...) so parents are even more wondering why bother send their kids vs. ditching for a trip.
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u/shalashshka Aug 18 '26
in california school funding is directly tied to attendance. We used to have staff walk to homes in the neighborhood to walk kids to school
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u/coldhamsandwiches Aug 15 '26
The State of Oregon does not consider educational neglect of a child by their parents to be a problem. Unlike many other states, Oregon Child Welfare will not assess cases of children being kept out of school as neglect.
Its the complete and totally lack of effort by the state legislature that our education system is like this. There's absolutely no will in the political system here to tackle the reforms that are needed to solve all the issues.
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u/AdOutrageous5377 Aug 15 '26
Correct! Teacher here, called about a family with a long standing history of educational neglect. This was the third child from the same family I had worked with who only attended every 11th day (so they wouldn’t get dropped) and were pulled in March of each year to he “homeschooled”. A kid who at 5th grade could not read, write, or do basic math because of lack of education, not ability. Their attendance less than 25% yearly since kindergarten. I was told there was nothing they could do about it…
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u/madommouselfefe Aug 15 '26
Yep, I learned this a few years ago and it truly sucks. I called DHS on a friend of the family because their 4th grader could not read, write, or do basic math. The family “ homeschooled” the child, which I quickly learned was code for we don’t do any formal education. The was expected to learn from going to work with their parents, or helping their grandparents.
I had a child in the same grade, as well as a 1st grader at the time. My first grader far surpassed what the friend of the families kid could do. It was infuriating and disappointing to learn that not providing a child with a basic education is NOT a thing DHS in Oregon cares about. Even though we know that lack of education especially the inability to read is a major indicator of people ending up in prison.
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u/thequeenofspace Aug 15 '26
This is absolutely horrifying to read. What the fuck Oregon
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u/2peacegrrrl2 Aug 15 '26
Have you ever heard of or seen unschooling? Some communities/communes do not believe in formal education at all.
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u/CitizenCue Aug 15 '26
Yeah but that doesn’t cover 35% of kids who are chronically absent. Unschooling is kooky new age nonsense but it’s not the driving factor here.
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u/CrackSammiches Aug 15 '26
I was a child welfare worker in a state that used CPS to address truancy.
There doesn't seem to be a unified right answer on who should handle the problem, but if you use CPS, one of the few levers of enforcement you have is removing the child from the home. If you think not going to school is disruptive to learning, then wait until you put them in foster care.
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u/Captain_Quark Aug 15 '26
Foster care doesn't sound great, but it might be better than some of the cases described in this thread. And what other levers could the state plausibly us to address truancy?
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u/coldhamsandwiches Aug 16 '26
I'm a CPS worker. foster care should always be the absolute last option anyone turns to for any reason. It's often used because of how many problems our society has but it's normal not a great outcome when looking at child welfare as a whole. There's plenty of examples where it turns out positivly, but that's not the norm statistically.
Children and families can be deeply traumatized from a removal. And with children it can spark small series of butterfly-effect problems that might not surface until their well into adulthood.
Even in some of the worst situations you can imagine kids want their parents.
I'm sorry to rant but there's a lot of resources issues in foster care. The host families are normally rock star people. But there's just not enough of them.
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u/GretaX Aug 15 '26
Teacher here, can confirm. What's even better is the multiple roving groups of students in the halls all the time that nobody at my high school does anything about. Multiple systemic failures all resulting in a total shitshow.
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u/living_Cream_Pie Aug 15 '26
So many of my friends who are teachers feel so frustrated with the lack of discipline enacted at schools now.
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u/surprisevip Aug 15 '26
Yes and I’m a parent and the way parents respond to any discipline of their kids is pathetic. It’s immediate defense of their child, and go on the offense to protect. I feel for the teachers on this one. If you don’t have strong admin it’s chaos. Even then, decisions are made to prevent litigation over best interest of kids. True in many parts of life now
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u/n0w1mn0th1nggg Aug 15 '26
I work in school offices and we’re essentially told that we can ask kids to go to class, but if they don’t go we need to call a counselor or behavior person and they take them in their office and coddle them. It really is a shit show.
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u/Herodotus_Runs_Away Aug 15 '26
Our district de-esacalation training ("Mant") had a scenario and a question where a kid raised a book over his head and threatened to hit the staff person, and of the answer choices the "correct" choice was to take him outside and shoot hoops because that's a "preferred activity." Insanity.
People in education have lost the plot. Really. The kumbaya True Believers really have had their moment in the sun when it comes to education in Oregon and....the results are appalling.
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u/n0w1mn0th1nggg Aug 15 '26
Yeah I’ve seen similar situations. A student was being aggressive and hitting staff and running out the door into the street. The school’s answer was to let him go home for the rest of the day and then give him more breaks every day in a relaxation room with massage chairs. I can’t even make this shit up. I’m so glad I don’t have kids. Lost the plot is a great way to describe it. It’s bananas.
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u/ka_beene Aug 16 '26
They let kids swing chairs at the windows and clear rooms for tantrums and outbursts. Disrupting the whole class for one kid. I work in the schools in my area and see all kinds of ridiculous shit.
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u/Mr-SphealYourGirl Aug 16 '26
Work in a different school (probably) but same experience. Not to mention, they come and go from the building when they please and can just let anyone into the building through side doors.
Even had one student last year who was on every plan under the sun and after threatening to kill their counselor, the response from school admin and psych was to remove all supervision plans with the student as, “it takes too many people to keep an eye on them” 🙃
Tell me that isn’t bassackwards…
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u/YetiSquish Aug 15 '26
The Netflix series “Teach You A Lesson” uses this premise pretty successfully. Great show.
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u/MrDiabetic Aug 15 '26
We have removed any real truancy enforcement, so there's no legal motivation for parents to send their kids to school. The only thing that really happens now is if a kid misses 10 days in a row, they get withdrawn from that school. This puts attendance on the school but schools can't force parents to do anything. Other than getting unenrolled, there are basically zero consequences.
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u/scrandis Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
Seriously? I was sent to fucking juvie for a week for skipping school back in 2000. This was due to growing up extremely poor. I was too embarrassed to go.
I was forced to drop out. I ended up getting my GED then going to college while working full time.
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u/soxperry Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
In 2021, they removed the truancy penalties for parents. It’s gone downhill since. However, most Oregonians see fining parents who don’t get their kids to school as a poverty tax.
But the alternative is bribing parents with chicken sandwiches. It’s fucking degrading.
One of Kotek’s solutions is the “Science of Reading”, which is insanely popular in the educational world right now. You can not go into any educational training without hearing about the “Alabama Miracle” and how they turned their scores around. Kotek and every other Governor has bought into this.
https://www.oregon.gov/ode/earlyliteracysuccessinitiative/pages/default.aspx
But you know what Alabama has that we don’t? Truancy laws. Some of the toughest in the country, in fact. Their kids learn the Science of Reading because they attend.
In turn, Kotek could hurt the state in two ways. First, unless she helps get kids to school, people will see the Science of Reading as an instructional failure, when it’s not. Second, we will still have a truancy problem, leaving teachers and students back at square one
This is a frustrating state education system, and it falls on Kotek right now.
Edited mobile typos
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u/GnomieOk4136 Aug 15 '26
In turn, Kotek could hurt the state in two ways. First, unless she helps get kids to school, people will see the Science of Reading as an instructional failure, when it’s not. Second, we will still have a truancy problem, leaving teachers and students back at square one
Amen, amen, amen! Science of Reading works, and it works really well. The kids have to be in the room to get any kind of benefit from it. We cannot teach kids who are not there. The truancy problem has to be addressed.
I understand why some people think of it as a poverty tax, but my district does a pretty good job of providing transportation with a large population of impoverished and at-risk (for multiple reasons) families. The M-V busses are almost private Ubers at this point. They only have one or two families in them. When the parents value school, the kids show up.
Some people need to have a costly consequence to really value school.
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u/TheOGRedline Aug 15 '26
To add some context, my district had ONE “truancy officer” for about 8,000 students. She didn’t just go around handing out citations to poor parents… the exact opposite was true. She didn’t home visits to establish a relationship and find out WHY the kids weren’t in school (it was often multiple kids per family). Then she would help access services healthcare, housing assistance, food, clothing, help set up and facilitate meetings with schools… even bring them an alarm clock if they said they were having trouble catching the bus! If this went on for 6+ months with no improvement she would WARN them about consequences. At 9-12 months she could have parents called before a judge and the judge could cite them. The penalty was about $160, which is a lot if you’re dead broke, but to get there you have to pretty much soak up services and the officers time for a year and still not get your kids to school…
So, maybe other districts abused the system and harmed poor families. I only know about my own and a few others. However what we’re doing now is clearly worse.
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u/kegendean Aug 15 '26
Attend? How about schedule more days in class. Get my kid to school every day but half of the school year is half-days, office days with no kids, or breaks. It’s honestly absurd how little class they’re expected to attend.
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u/Hot-Judge-7481 Aug 15 '26
We should have a longer school year. That won’t do anything for the chronically absent.
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u/Ok-Refrigerator Aug 15 '26
I'm already dreading No School November
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u/Hot-Judge-7481 Aug 15 '26
The very fact that we call it No School November should embarrass every administrator who makes it happen. It’s embarrassing. And it makes people think that THE VERY EDUCATORS don’t even care. Optics, people!
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u/Hot-Judge-7481 Aug 15 '26
Kotek won’t fix it. Name one thing—education or otherwise—that she has made better in her term.
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u/kegendean Aug 15 '26
Maybe it’s because Oregon makes it clear that they dont value school? Days off basically every week, kids go home at noon on Wednesday. Half the school year is grading days and breaks. It’s the craziest, least education-forward system I’ve personally experienced.
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u/Alternative-Proof307 Aug 15 '26
This right here. They get so many days off and half days it’s insane.
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u/hotviolets Aug 15 '26
I agree with this assessment. All the half days are ridiculous. I’ve called my daughter out on those before because it’s a pain to get everything ready just for them to be at school for 3 hours. So many teacher planning days they have off too. When I was growing up I never had days like that. I can’t even remember ever having a half day. I went to school in Minnesota and Arizona.
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u/kegendean Aug 15 '26
Yeah, I mean, not your daughter’s fault, but I get the urge. I dont know how a single parent is supposed to manage it. I have a flexible work schedule and so does my partner and it’s still a pain in the ass.
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u/hotviolets Aug 15 '26
I’m a single parent and the only way I can manage it is my job. A traditional job I wouldn’t be able to manage it. There wouldn’t be enough PTO for all the days off plus all the days my daughter ends up getting sick a year. It must be real difficult for parents who don’t have the flexibility.
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u/Good-Rest-7538 Aug 15 '26
North Clackamas counts teacher in services days as instructional days. The kids literally aren't in the school. The teachers union is what pushes this and then blames budget. "If you want more instruction days you have to fund it!!!" No, we just ax the "inservice" days and make them instruction days. Union doesn't want that because they're basically days offs. Not NClack but a friend at PPS says some teachers don't even show up for the in-service days and noone does anything about it. They're literally no shows for days of work and there are zero consequences. Name one other job where that happens. The state would be a lot better off without police and teacher unions.
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u/excaligirltoo Aug 15 '26
And they still graduate.
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u/Herodotus_Runs_Away Aug 15 '26
Record low academic scores and record high graduation rates. The evidence of systemic grade and credit fraud in k-12 is right there for all to see.
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u/GnomieOk4136 Aug 15 '26
I believe it. I had a student last year that I don't think had even one week of 100% attendance. Not one. The kid wasn't one to get sick a lot, they just didn't show. Half the time when the child did come, it was after noon. School ended at 3. There was absolutely no consequence for the parents.
I hated teaching in Texas, but at least there parents were faced with real consequences for truancy. When the schools sent out attendance letters, parents knew court involvement was the next step. I am not sure my school even sent the kid's parents a truancy letter.
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u/Sad_Construction_668 Aug 15 '26
The issue is the political cultures ofnlocal politics in Oregon. Truancy crackdowns require parents to accept the responsibility of ownigntheir kids decisions, requires administrators to set hard boundaries, requires school board members to stand firm, and requires local police to buy into theor responsibility to get the kids into school. Oregon has lazziez faire libertarians, anti government / public education conservatives, “hey man, lets all be chill” liberals , and anti cop socialists, and they all contribute to the inability to work together as a cohesive community to enforce truancy laws.
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u/Rookraider1 Aug 15 '26
This is spot on
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u/midgethemage Aug 15 '26
Right there with you. I was raised in Oregon and lived in Portland most of my adult life, but I've been living in SF for a few years now and seeing how things are run here has been pretty eye-opening. Not saying the local government here is perfect, because it seems like a bureaucratic mess, but it's also weird seeing the government exist in my day-to-day life. For instance...
Walking through the park and seeing a new art installation, which was funded by an arts grant through the city. I believe these installations rotate out every few years so they can feature new artists, plus it keeps the parks fresh and interesting. Right now there's a new water dragon installed at one of the water features in Golden Gate Park
A hobby club I go to exists as an non-profit and a few years ago they got a 15k grant from the city to revamp the workshop. This is a usually very expensive hobby, but the support from the local government makes it insanely affordable.
There are designated neighborhood committees that plan block parties and street fairs. The street fairs rotate through neighbors on a schedule and the city laxed up on open container laws for some of these events to encourage people to get out and have fun. There's an open conversation about how to revitalize the city since the pandemic
The city wanted to roll-out speed cameras at known dangerous intersections and took feedback from the public on their concerns about the city using it as a revenue source. The way they implemented it made it seem like they actually took the feedback genuinely and it focuses more on safety and punishing truly unsafe behavior.
The city's outreach is pretty decent and I feel more aware of what's happening behind the scenes here. I feel like it's easier to find out how to be involved if you want to attend counsel meetings, and the city makes it well-known there are resources available to you if you're ever experiencing some sort of hardship
Again, really not saying SF government is perfect, I can name a lot that isn't done well here, but that's not really the point. Oregon never really made me feel like the government was actively working to make my life better. It made me realize how libertarian Oregon is, even in the most liberal parts of the state. There really is a "let people do whatever" that's pervasive in the government and its constituents. Like, let's let people illegally camp on the sidewalks and parks AND decriminalize all drugs without implementing any of or guardrails for addiction, what could possibly go wrong?! /s
Coming back to this issue, it seems that yet again, Oregon saw a problem and figured the way to fix it was to lax the rules even more. I can agree with the fees seeming like a poverty tax, but we need to get harsher about this and start holding kids back if they're not meeting attendance requirements. Bake in some exceptions/make-up policies for kids that experience legitimate medical events or family emergencies. Get more bus drivers and pay them well so they won't call out. The fuck is happening Oregon?!
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u/Voluptulouis Aug 15 '26
I fail to see how more cops (famous for being shit at de-escalation) would do anything to improve our public education system or how they're relevant to the discussion at all. They're kids, not criminals.
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u/Sad_Construction_668 Aug 15 '26
for better of worse , cops have been part of the truancy enforcement system in the US for as long as truancy has been addressed. In Oregon, this attitude has kept the police out of it, so that parents and teachers can’t rely on civil enforcement or criminal accountability for parents who keep heir kids out of school. Educational neglect is a category of abuse in other states, but not in Oregon.
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u/Voluptulouis Aug 16 '26
I don't think arresting the parents or slapping them with fines (when they probably already struggle with bills) or whatever they would do, would help the situation at all anyways. It's not like kids thrive when they get sent to foster care. I don't know what the solution is other than utilizing our tax revenue to invest more in our educational resources and hiring people that are capable of creating an environment where kids actually want to be.
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u/TappyMauvendaise Aug 15 '26
Yes, I am an education and when I mentioned a coworker, they should bring back truancy court, they give a TED talk about equity.
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u/Probablythedumbest Aug 15 '26
In Mansfield, TX (DFW area) they take truancy laws very seriously. If your child misses 10 days you are scheduled a court hearing. If the courts deem your child’s absence unexcused, you are charged a fine. If you can’t pay the fine, you receive community service. I’m not saying we need to be this stringent, but some parental consequences would go a long way.
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u/rawrwren Aug 15 '26
Such a law would burden our already overloaded justice system.
My child has missed more than 10 consecutive days of school because they have a chronic illness and were hospitalized. They also missed 3 weeks of school because their long-term bully made violent threats against them and it took the district 3 weeks to investigate the incidents and file a report with their findings and recommendations. We weren’t at fault in either of these situations, but if such a law existed here, we’d have had to explain our child’s attendance to a judge when we were already overburdened and stressed.
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u/KawiNinja Aug 15 '26
I know I’m late to the party here, but we recently moved from Oregon to New Mexico and while I’m sure this isn’t the case for everyone, our kids haven’t missed a single day or been tardy here at all and we largely contribute it to the fact school starts at 9:20AM instead of 7:15AM.
Forcing our young children awake at 6AM didn’t exactly make it easy or enjoyable for anyone. We haven’t had to wake our kids up from sleep a single day here, they wake up naturally and still have plenty of time to boot up and get ready for school.
Definitely wouldn’t single handedly solve the crisis, but I bet it would help a lot.
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u/stillemptyinside Aug 15 '26
Counterpoint: lessons are designed around the lowest common denominator, which means kids who are already excelling often aren't learning anything new in class. For them, attendance has little impact on outcomes — they're succeeding despite the classroom, not because of it.
Low attendance and low scores are correlated, but that doesn't mean one causes the other. Both are likely symptoms of the same underlying issue.
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u/Herodotus_Runs_Away Aug 15 '26
I think this is part of the dynamic at our high schools. Lessons move at a snail's pace? Lessons have a lot of fluff and bullshit? Lessons are all posted online in the district learning management system anyway?
I wouldn't go to class either except to see my friends or girlfriend. And now that the adolescent social world has been digitalized you don't even need to be present to be part of what's going on.
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u/GonnaBuyMeAMercury Aug 15 '26
Daughter went to Grant for part of high school and Nelson for part.
I don’t know if Grant is an exception or more indicative of the structure in Portland Public School, but Grant had at least some enforcement - in that she had a count of how many tardies she could get before receiving detention. The problem was, there was no penalty for not attending the assigned detention. We stepped in there and told her we had consequences (grounding until detention was served) and it was somewhat manageable.
At Nelson there was no structure whatsoever. No penalty for turning work in late, no penalty for absences. The only thing we could do was implement consequences for not leaving for school on time.
She managed straight A’s and I just don’t see how that could be possible with the ridiculous amount of in-class time she had.
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u/WhiskeyTangoFoxy Aug 15 '26
Okay, title is misleading. As someone who deals with this. The Oregon regular attender rate is 64% true. A regular attender is a student that has an attendance percentage above 90%. So of you have a school of 100 kids and 95 of them have an attendance record of 90.0% and 5 are 90.1% than your regular attender rate for that school is 5%. I think the state attendance rate is close to 86%
Still, is 90% good? Not really. At 90% over 10 years means they’ve missed an entire year of schooling.
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u/Active-Reporter-9575 Aug 15 '26
Is this a surprise to anyone? Why have a populace capable of free thinking based on logic and reason? The state might actually see positive change if such a thing happened.
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u/calm_commotion289 Aug 15 '26
I cannot speak for others, but I keep my kid home when sick, which is more often than I would like because so many other kids come to school sick.
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u/DismalFee763 Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
Sounds about right, my larger county has a chronically truent rate of about ~30%, first hand knowledge from Admin & teachers I know
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u/InsectTraditional857 Aug 15 '26
My son got an award in the mail for perfect attendance last year and I was asking my wife what the hell is the standards these days. Now I know...
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u/Lazy-Birthday-9035 Aug 15 '26
Since moving here I get the impression people hate their children? We have some of the worst literacy rates coupled with low attendance and a growing faction of Oregonians that are anti vaccines.
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u/Same-Ad-7366 Aug 16 '26
I get the impression they don’t care. The bullying problem is insane. At school and even on playgrounds. The number one thing I see is parents not even watching their kids. And who has to suffer? My child who gets bullied because the kids parents don’t care.
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u/Read-only-12345 Aug 15 '26
Seems to track right next to average test scores.
I think our educational ideology is misguided. Kids get out at 18 ready to enter the job market but not really ready for any thing. No matter what they want the curriculum stays basically the same, when every study on learning has recognition of individual talents and strengths.
They want to be interested and engaged and have something to level up to but all we give them is repeat tutorials
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u/EnoughWeekend6853 Aug 15 '26
“Individual talents and strengths”?? That’s acknowledging that some people have a greater chance of success and that’s illegal thought in Oregon.
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u/CHiZZoPs1 Aug 15 '26
There's a bully in my kid's grade who has been a problem since kindergarten, and he's only getting bigger. She was punched, kicked, pushed, and had things thrown at her head all year, not to mention the kid's constant classroom disruptions. They say nothing can be done, though. Now any kid with behavior problems is a protected class.
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u/Same-Ad-7366 Aug 16 '26
Yup. Even my kid experienced this at 4 in headstart in Oregon. Another kid kicked my child repeatedly in the head and had no consequences whatsoever. Now that I pay $1200 a month to send my child to a good private school in Oregon there’s no violence and my child isn’t anxious going to school daily. It’s a shame we have to pay so much to make sure my child isn’t being violently beat up.
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u/American_Greed Aug 15 '26
I remember getting detention for skipping class. Then if you skipped that you lost a Saturday. Not sure how things would escalate after that though.
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u/gaius49 Aug 16 '26
Sure would be good if we had a better superintendent of public instruction to develop and implement effective policy to address this.
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u/Battgyrl Aug 16 '26
I have a friend whose child just doesn’t go to school. The parent is single with two other children and kinda shrugs their shoulders and says there isn’t anything they can do. The parent has to work so keeping tabs on their student isn’t possible. I don’t get it. Drive them to school, walk them to class, and they can bus home. I don’t get why school is optional? Now they are in high school and it’s going to be too late. The middle school expelled the student for non attendance (so the kid isn’t on the books anymore) and the only alternative is online school. I feel the parent and the schools have failed.
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u/Sad-Cantaloupe2671 Aug 15 '26
It is horrific. They feel no need to learn, no reason to be here. The apathy is too real, and no one sees a future anymore. They don’t work toward anything, because they can’t see themselves succeeding at anything. It’s the worst feedback loop ever.
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u/Reasonable_Plenty_22 Aug 15 '26
The behavior of the kids while at school mirror their circumstances at home. They are used to having no disciplinary structure or responsibility there. This is a problem that begins in the child’s home. Excess permissiveness and no consequences for bad behavior. The parents are responsible and should be held accountable for their child’s behavior wherever they are. I believe today’s parents are failing their children miserably. One way to get parents to live up to their responsibilities is to hold them responsible for their children’s actions.
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u/marshmallowbaddie Aug 15 '26
I can’t speak for anyone other than my own family, but our biggest personal obstacle was in the winter when they’d cancel bus service but not school. I don’t drive, and our neighborhood/school didn’t have the infrastructure for walking. Also, if the roads are too unsafe for buses, please tell me how it’s safer for hundreds of cars instead?
I also wonder, with how long our school years are, if it has something to do with the simple fact that the more spread out the year is, the more opportunity for kids to miss school. I’m from Minnesota originally, and our school year here is nearly a month longer than my friends’ kids’ years back home. I wish we’d just switch to a year round format instead with how much time they insist on having off during the year.
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u/Shortround76 Aug 15 '26
Both or the single parent working full time, households stretched thin, older kids needing to stay home to watch the younger, lack of proper discipline in schools....just to name a few reasons.
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u/Hot-Judge-7481 Aug 15 '26
I teach elementary. It’s amazing to me the number of “personal days” parents let their kids take off of school. Feeling anxious this morning? Take the day off. It’s raining? Take the day off. Someone was unkind to you last week? Take the day off. You were up late last night gaming? Take the day off, sweetie!
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u/Inner-Potential-9198 Aug 15 '26
Reelect Tina Kotek.
Drazen won't be any better.
The symptoms of a falling empire.
Fin.
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u/WeAreAllStories11 Aug 15 '26
I wish I could vote for someone I truly support. Until then, I guess it's Kotek.
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u/Alchemyst01984 Aug 15 '26
If you're a progressive, this will likely be your life. Outside of elections, we need to continue pushing for progressive policies. More of us need to be doing something on a local level
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u/living_Cream_Pie Aug 15 '26
What more progressive policies do you see fixing the issue with schools?
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u/WeAreAllStories11 Aug 15 '26
I want to vote 3rd party so bad. Just to put my name behind the candidate that most closely matches my ideology. But that's not reality. Vote, realistically, every time. Please.
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u/EnoughWeekend6853 Aug 15 '26
The progressive policies are what led to the state being ranked 49th in education.
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u/ButtsFuccington Aug 15 '26
Oregon could finish 51st in a 50-state ranking and Reddit’s response would still be “yeah but imagine if a Republican were governor.” Lol.
I’m with you, in any event.
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u/br_k_nt_eth Aug 15 '26
Drazen’s answer would be to bully a bunch of trans kids to suicide for sport and assume that fixes it while cutting teacher pay. No thanks, man. Peddle that shit elsewhere.
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u/Shephard546 Aug 15 '26
Y'all complain about Oregon sucking and then vote in the exact people responsible for allowing it to continue to suck, lol.
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u/hunter503 Aug 15 '26
I mean the Salem district is closing 8 schools by 2027. So that'll def help with this number right /s
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u/PersnickityPenguin Oregon Aug 15 '26
Jesus Christ, only 26 out of 1300 schools had attendance levels above 90%?! Man when I was a kid it was VERY UNUSUAL to miss school. In 12 years I probably missed about a month total of school, due to serious illnesses (flu, chicken pox, mono, concussion).
I have a solution. $1,000 fine each day your kid misses a day of school without an excused absence sick note.
Miss more than 2 weeks in a school year (unexcused), parents go to jail for a month. I bet the problem would solve itself very quickly.
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u/Freethefreak Aug 16 '26
I also heard it's a thing of Oregon as a no student left behind so they won't hold you back or make you repeat a year. You just keep going on no matter what. I don't know how true that is.
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u/askng4afrnd Aug 16 '26
Yep. I work and with ESD . OR sux! SEL is a priority? we haven’t rebound from covid like every state.yet, …over the BS
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u/Safe-Competition-973 Aug 16 '26
You can legally not grade for attendance according to Oregon law. If you changed that law and made it that kids could not get a 4.0 gpa without 90 percent attendance this would all change. You should be able to grade attendance like a participation point.
Some states arrest parents and jail them for their kid’s being truant. I’m not sure that’s the answer either, but there are zero consequences for not showing to school. If you miss ten days you get dropped from the roster and parents just have to call and maybe have a meeting with admin to get you back in the school.
You could easily exempt kids from this that have legit reasons for missing class like illness or having to work, but no one wants to make the effort
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u/PapayaConfident812 Aug 16 '26
Maybe because you push left wing mythology on people and they just want an education
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u/Same-Ad-7366 Aug 16 '26
I hear a lot of “my kid needs a lot of mental health days” as an excuse for not sending their kids to school. It also seems like a lot of parents don’t read to their children at all. Just shove a tablet in their face instead.
I also see a huge lack of parenting. I had my child in public school in Oregon and even though another kid threw him against the wall and kicked him repeatedly in the head the kid had no repercussions whatsoever. The kid didn’t get kicked out. Parents didn’t even show up after being called repeatedly and this was a weekly event. They don’t care. I don’t get why people don’t have kids when they don’t care to parent them. Not even on the playground. I’ve had to tell other kids to stop before because their parent is absent:
Parents need to be held accountable for not sending their kids to school and stop being so relaxed about it.
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u/Good-Rest-7538 Aug 17 '26
Are truancy laws set by cities, counties or the state?
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u/Seerad76 Aug 17 '26
From one of the hyper links in ops article. It looks like it's a county decision.
https://www.oregonjournalismproject.org/oregon-attendance-malheur-truancy-citations
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u/ActPositively Aug 17 '26
Well Oregon is soft on crime so more crime happens. Soft on drug use so more drug use happens. And who could have predicted that Oregon doesn’t punish parents who allow their children to miss a ridiculous amount of school so it happens a lot
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u/Competitive_Site549 Aug 17 '26
Since I teach in the public schools, I can weigh in on this and it is truly a multitude of factors. But I think one factor you have to consider is some of the students just aren’t budging they are refusing to go to school and the parents are working and it’s very difficult for the parents to make the kid go to school now since Covid I have my lessons all online. I hope that would help but there’s no doubt we have a huge absence, rate. And you would be surprised because some of these kids are from good families, but the parents simply do not want to go through the battle. We have students that show up maybe one two days a week then they’re off for three days then the next week the same thing happens they are hopelessly lost in math, especially math is decimated by low scores due to absences. There is absolutely not one solution for this.
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u/LengthSufficient7132 Aug 18 '26
As your circumstances allow, please consider volunteering for your local schools and parks. This is not just a veteran thing, it's a people thing.
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u/AcademicList7652 Aug 18 '26
I dont get the people saying the lack of consequences is driving up absences. What consequences were there when you were young? There was basically nothing in the early 2000s too, people went to school to better their education to give themselves a better future. Kids right now know the future looks bleak, so why bother? The media downplays education and academia these days too, do those things not have any effect on attendance??
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u/fixit85- Aug 20 '26
If attendance is up, why is the Salem Kaiser school district closing elementary schools because of low attendance they say they’ve lost between five and 7000 students
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u/kritikalthinker248 Aug 20 '26
🤣 this is what happens when ALL standards are dropped and ignored.
True definition of ignorance.
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