SALEM — Oregon leaders’ hands-off approach to public school spending and results has put the state at risk of wasting taxpayers’ investments and failing to improve student success, state auditors warned in a report issued Tuesday, May 24.

State auditors in the Secretary of State’s Office addressed their “systemic risk report” to Gov. Kate Brown, the state Board of Education and Oregon’s 90 lawmakers. Those officials have sat by for years as the state education agency did little to set meaningfully high standards for schools or districts and did little to intervene when some of them vastly underdelivered for their students, particularly students of color and those living in poverty, auditors found.

The auditors highlighted five risks and potential solutions and said that, based on their extensive reviews of Oregon’s K-12 system over the past six years, “a lack of intervention by (Oregon Department of Education), despite significant problems at the school and district level, has been a larger problem than infringement on local control.”

Oregon schools are awash in cash relative to recent years. Since the 2020-21 school year, a corporate tax for education has delivered roughly $1 billion a year for new and upgraded programs and services. In addition, Oregon has received more than $1.7 billion in federal pandemic relief funding for schools since March 2020.

But policymakers haven’t insisted that schools show evidence that money is paying off for students — something auditors said is essential to ensure the money is spent effectively. Instead, some candidates for governor and state lawmakers have said the state should cut back on standardized testing. And the Legislature dropped requirements that schools help all students demonstrate proficiency in writing and math before giving them diplomas.

Oregon’s education department has a crucial role to play in holding school districts accountable for improving student learning outcomes, auditors insisted. They told the governor, state board and Legislature that is unlikely to happen without action on their part.

Low-graduation rates

The Oregon Department of Education has a well-documented history of focusing on school districts’ processes rather than the results schools achieve for students, they wrote. And its timidity about stating which forms of spending are effective and which are not, along with its reliance on superficial signs of adherence to important educational standards, suggests the $1 billion-plus-per-year from a new corporate tax for education could be put to suboptimal use, auditors found.

“Our audits have consistently found issues with (the Oregon Department of Education’s) … effective, timely intervention when districts or schools struggle,” they wrote. “State leaders need to monitor how the agency itself is performing and intervene when necessary to ensure student success does, in fact, increase.”

Oregon’s graduation rate remains among the lowest in the nation, they noted.

The state education agency’s enforcement of state standards designed to improve student achievement “is limited,” they wrote. “Districts are required to prepare and publicly report a (state standards) compliance form, but it consists of one page of checkboxes.”

Oregon is on its fourth try at improving K-12 education since the 1990s, after leaders abandoned the previous strategies, auditors said. Certificates of initial mastery, the Oregon Education Investment Board and its Achievement Compacts are among the high-profile efforts that past governors and lawmakers instituted — then abandoned before they took full effect, the auditors wrote. The idea behind the master certificates was that schools would have to ensure students mastered reading, writing, math and other academic skills to graduate, but that never happened.Nationwide, students experienced notable learning losses during the pandemic due to the shift to online learning and partial school days, researchers have found. In Oregon, the pandemic slowed efforts to address longstanding inequities and other needed improvements in the state’s education system, including some previously identified by state auditors.

For example when state auditors followed up in 2021 to see if the education department had implemented auditors’ recommendations from a 2019 report, it turned out the education agency had completed only two of the 11 recommendations.

Meanwhile, Oregon leaders have for years declined to collect course grades or specific credits attained by middle school and high school students, which would help the education department “analyze when students are most likely to fall off track, which courses have high failure rates, and how student success or failure in specific courses ties to graduation,” auditors wrote.

The state “has no ability to assess how many students take and pass Algebra 1, a key course required for graduation; how ability to pass ultimately affects students’ graduation prospects; and whether a lack of the Algebra 1 credit plays a larger role than other potential barriers to graduation. (The education department) also doesn’t have information about which 10th-, 11th- and 12th-grade students are on-track to graduate. That metric stops at ninth grade.”

State lawmakers in 2017 rejected a proposal to collect high school credit attainment data, and managers at the education department told auditors they could not collect the middle school or high school data unless they get more funding.

Auditors suggested Brown will likely leave a disappointing legacy in the education realm when she finishes her term in December, given how much power she could have used to bring about improved results from the massive spending infusion: “Under Oregon law, governors have a strong role in K-12 education, serving as superintendent of public instruction, appointing a deputy superintendent to direct (the state education agency), serving as the administrative officer of the state Board of Education, overseeing (state education) programs and proposing a K-12 budget to the Legislature.”