In this series: Oregon Chronic Absenteeism.

Before the pandemic, NyssaET had a chronic absenteeism rate of 16.9%. Marcola had 14.7%. Brookings-Harbor had 29.3%. These are small districts in rural Oregon, a farming town in Malheur County, a timber community east of Eugene, a fishing village on the southern coast.

In 2024-25, all three are below their pre-COVID rates. Nyssa is at 10.6%. Marcola at 8.4%. Brookings-Harbor at 27.3%, still high, but lower than the 29.3% it posted in 2019, before anyone had heard of COVID-19.

They are among just 16 districts in the entire state that can say the same. Out of 178 Oregon districts with comparable data, only 9% have recovered to their pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism levels.

The 162 that haven't

The median non-recovered district is 13.2 percentage points above its pre-COVID rate. That means about two-thirds of Oregon's districts have seen their chronic absenteeism rate rise by more than 10 points since the pandemic, the equivalent of an additional one in ten students becoming chronically absent.

The worst gaps are staggering. Several small districts saw their rates double or triple. Among larger districts, the pattern is consistent: Salem-Keizer is 16.9 points above its 2019 rate. Beaverton is up 11.6 points. Hillsboro is up 14.7. North Clackamas is up 13.2. Portland is up 13.6 points.

The top 10 largest: all worse

None of Oregon's 10 largest school districts have recovered their pre-pandemic attendance. Portland (41,435 students), Beaverton (36,315), Salem-Keizer (35,987), Hillsboro (18,051), North Clackamas (16,351), Bend-La Pine (16,338), Eugene (15,253), Medford (13,139), Tigard-Tualatin (10,964), and Gresham-Barlow (10,842): every one is worse than 2019.

Beaverton, at 28.7% chronic absenteeism, is 11.6 points above its pre-COVID level of 17.1%. Portland's 32.5% represents a 13.6-point increase from its 2019 rate of 18.9%. Salem-Keizer's 43.1% is the furthest from recovery, 16.9 points above its pre-pandemic 26.2%.

The large-district failure is the most consequential finding. These 10 districts educate roughly 215,000 students, more than 40% of the state. Their non-recovery drives the statewide number.

What the recovered districts share

The 16 recovered districts are mostly small and rural. The largest is Nyssa SD at 2,185 students. None serve more than 3,000. This makes their recoveries both inspiring and limited in what they can teach the larger system. A district of 2,000 can deploy its attendance coordinator to every family. A district of 46,000 cannot.

Several recovered districts had relatively high pre-COVID rates, meaning they had further to fall and a lower bar to clear. Brookings-Harbor's "recovery" to 27.3% is still well above the state's pre-COVID average. Recovery, in this context, is a return to a status quo that was itself a problem.

The exception is MarcolaET at 8.4%, a rate that would be considered strong in any context. At 919 students, it is too small to generalize from. But it demonstrates that single-digit chronic absenteeism rates are achievable in rural Oregon.

The arithmetic of 9%

If 91% of districts have not recovered, and the statewide rate is improving at roughly 1 point per year, how long until recovery reaches the majority? The math depends on which districts improve and how fast. The statewide rate could continue dropping even as most individual districts remain above their baselines, if the largest districts are driving the aggregate improvement.

But the data so far suggests the opposite: the largest districts are among the furthest from recovery. Portland's 4.4-point improvement in 2025 is encouraging but still leaves a 13.6-point gap. Salem-Keizer has improved just 4.9 points from its peak. Beaverton got worse every year from 2016 through 2023 before a partial recovery in 2024.

At 9% recovered three years after the peak, Oregon's school attendance crisis is not resolving district by district. It is resolving (slowly, unevenly) at the aggregate level, while the individual district landscape remains overwhelmingly worse than it was.

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