By ROB MANNING/Oregon Public Broadcasting

SALEM — The Oregon Secretary of State’s Office has released its third in a series of audits of the Oregon Department of Education’s High School Success program, and found a handful of positive examples to highlight.

The audit notes the investment in career-technical education programs in Woodburn, which led to 40% more participating students at the high school, and similar increases across Salem-Keizer, one of the state’s largest districts. That’s significant, as the hands-on, career-oriented programs often boost attendance and graduation rates, especially among students at risk of dropping out.

Auditors also highlight dramatic gains in graduation rates at Madras High School and ninth grade on-track rates at Parkrose High. School district administrators prioritized those areas with their share of the state’s $125 million annual High School Success program, created by Measure 98.

But auditors also found that, overall, recent outcomes for Oregon high schoolers have been mixed and it’s hard to determine how much the recent gains or losses were influenced by the initiative that voters approved in 2016.

The High School Success program provides grant funding to school districts to support efforts in line with specific goals, all tied to high school. Districts get $800 per high school student for efforts aimed at dropout prevention, college and career preparation, and expansion of career-technical education.

The idea is that by focusing on those three kinds of programs, the grants will keep students in school, support them toward graduation, and set them up to enroll in college or start a career after high school.

Education supporters in Oregon have often said the measure is helping high schoolers, including in a report earlier this year from the nonprofit education advocacy group Stand For Children, which helped back Measure 98 in 2016.

This most recent audit affirms that High School Success grants have contributed to recent gains, but auditors had a hard time drawing direct lines between individual efforts the grants funded and measurable gains for students.

“Specific outcomes from [High School Success] investments are difficult to determine, in part because the HSS program makes up only 5% of total school funding and many other programs work towards the same goals,” auditors wrote.

The audit notes that Oregon schools have managed to improve graduation and dropout rates, but have seen declines in attendance and college-going rates compared to before the pandemic. Auditors also found that on key metrics, students from historically underserved groups — such as students of color, students with disabilities and those whose native language isn’t English — went down.

Auditors found that “regular attendance rates, college-going rates and accelerated learning rates fell for each of these groups, often substantially.”

The audit attempted to key in on funding, and whether the High School Success program’s targeted spending moved the needle in demonstrable ways. But auditors found it hard to draw such conclusions.

The audit said “correlations were weak” across 15 wide-ranging measures from college-going rates to participation in career-technical classes to attendance. The main reasons cited included the “strong negative effect” on student outcomes due to the pandemic, and the relatively small amount of funding schools receive from the grants — only about 5% of overall spending on high schools. And auditors said the state isn’t doing enough to track outcomes at the school and district level.

The audit suggests that oversight from the Oregon Department of Education is overly limited — as the agency focuses primarily on regulatory compliance rather than the effectiveness of the funded programs.

“ODE has also not identified and evaluated HSS program outcomes or used information gathered from districts to identify successful strategies for increasing student success,” the audit says.

Program history

Auditors noted that Oregon has a habit of investing in major education initiatives, and then abandoning them, sometimes within just a few years. With the recent passage of the Student Success Act — which relies on a grant model similar to Measure 98 — auditors call for the state to work to improve implementation and integration of these efforts, to maximize impact on the state’s public schools. The audit notes the creation of the Office of Education Innovation and Improvement as a step in the right direction.

At the same time, the audit acknowledges the risk of requiring too much reporting at the local and state level. The audit notes that school districts don’t want to be saddled with too much red tape as they work to set up programs, and reporting requirements risk putting too big of an “administrative burden” on ODE.

The audit notes that ODE administers more than 108 separate federal and state grant programs, with multiple reporting requirements. The audit suggests the State Board of Education and state legislators should find ways to streamline grant programs and reporting requirements, so that school officials can focus more on improving outcomes for students and less on paperwork.

The audit made eight recommendations — largely directing ODE to do a better job of prioritizing what information to collect, streamlining processes and sharing what’s working. Only one of the suggestions had a deadline: for ODE to report to the Legislature by 2026 “on how ODE plans to identify, disseminate, and report on successful practices, effective spending, and statewide challenges facing grantees.”

State education department director Charlene Williams agreed with all eight of the audit’s recommendations and pledged to act on them within the next year to two and a half years. However, Williams pointed out that on some suggestions — such as limiting the information collected from school districts – the department is bound by state law, meaning lawmakers would have to step in.