Report: Measure 98′s targeted spending has helped Oregon high schools, despite lagging graduation rates

Since Measure 98 was passed by Oregon voters in 2016, the High School Success Fund has poured millions of dollars into schools throughout the state.

The initiative uses a targeted funding model. The state sets aside roughly $150 million per year, giving districts about $800 per high school student. The districts have to use the money for college prep, dropout prevention, or career and technical education.

The idea is to improve Oregon’s lagging graduation rate and ensure all students are ready for what comes after high school. And since its passing, advocates have said the way Measure 98 directs funding to specific education priorities is a model worth following to get resources into schools, while measuring results and holding schools accountable for the outcomes.

But does Measure 98 deserve the strong reputation it has among lawmakers and education experts in Oregon? Is it actually helping students?

A new report suggests the answer is yes.

Stand for Children Oregon, part of the national advocacy group, recently completed an analysis of the impact of Measure 98. The local branch led the charge to write the measure in the first place, and its leaders have championed it since.

Stand for Children’s new analysis looks at statewide graduation rates, dropout rates, ninth-grade on-track data, and career and technical education data to see how Measure 98 has affected Oregon education. The report, provided to OPB, concludes that Measure 98 has proven successful and equitable in its impact, contributing to improved outcomes for all Oregon high schoolers.

“A key goal of Measure 98 was to increase graduation rates, and data shows that the initiative has helped sustain and accelerate graduation rate improvement while closing opportunity gaps for historically underserved student groups,” Sarah Pope, executive director of Stand for Children Oregon, said in the report.

During the first three years of Measure 98 funding, according to Stand for Children’s data, the graduation rate for Hispanic or Latino students grew at a faster pace than the rate for all students. The graduation rate for students in low-income households has also grown substantially — more than 10 percentage points — since prior to Measure 98.

The most significant single-year improvement and the best-ever recorded high school graduation rate in Oregon was 82.63% in 2019-20, the first year of full funding for the High School Success Fund from the state Legislature.

Not only have more students graduated since Measure 98 was implemented, but fewer students have dropped out. According to the report, the average annual statewide dropout rate was 4% in the four years prior to the implementation of Measure 98. Over the first four years of Measure 98 funding, the rate decreased to 2.75%.

And given many schools have used the funding to expand career and technical education, or CTE, programs, it’s no surprise those numbers have increased too.

According to the Stand for Children report, more than 76% of students in the 2022-23 graduating class were CTE participants, a notable increase from just over 60% in 2015-16, when voters passed the initiative. This is a big deal since research shows students who participate in CTE classes tend to have higher graduation rates and higher annual earnings after school than students who don’t.

COVID takes a toll on high school programs

Graduation rates were on the rise before Measure 98 passed and was partially funded in 2017-18. They continued to grow through the measure’s full funding in 2019-20. But things got worse in the years since COVID-19, in spite of full funding.

Despite schools’ best efforts, Oregon’s four-year graduation rate fluctuated during the pandemic. COVID-19 was a hugely disruptive force on schools, with forced closures and staff shortages. Oregon relaxed some graduation requirements and poured assistance money into student support, but students and schools still struggled.

Graduation and completion rates — whether we’re talking about students who take four or five years to earn their diploma, or who earned a GED or modified diploma — are all just a snapshot and temperature check of the state’s K-12 system. And they’re only one way of measuring the effect of the pandemic on Oregon high schools.

But graduation rates are important, in part because graduating from high school is important.

Research cited in an Oregon audit shows not graduating leads to higher unemployment, lower incomes, poorer health, higher incarceration rates and more reliance on social services. Society as a whole feels those impacts, in part because they cost Oregonians hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

Oregon’s high school graduation rates leveled off last year. There were years of steady gains leading up to the pandemic and graduation rates peaked in the spring of 2020.

More than four out of every five students in the Class of 2023 graduated on time, tying with the class before them at 81.3%, according to the Oregon Department of Education. This is the state’s second-highest recorded graduation rate, but some have challenged how legitimate the graduation rates are these days because of the changes to diploma requirements that came at the height of the pandemic.

The state hasn’t reached the 2020 peak since.

According to the Stand for Children report, Oregon is among a handful of states whose graduation rates have not fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels, along with Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Utah. By comparison, some states, including Washington, Colorado and California, have surpassed their previous rates.

The same issues were seen in the state’s dropout rates. These declined after Measure 98 funding was implemented, but have, since COVID, bounced back close to pre-Measure 98 levels.

But Jessie Ayala, the marketing and communications director for Oregon’s Stand for Children, pointed to one bright spot in the data during the COVID years — even during distance learning, CTE programs kept going.

“The good thing is, they barely cut programs, which is quite impressive, thinking about, [for example] a welding class. How did they keep that up?” she told OPB. “So, it does seem like schools worked really hard to maintain something that they knew was keeping their students engaged.”

In one district, expanded career programs and course offerings

Stand for Children’s Measure 98 report shows that the number of CTE programs statewide has exploded since its passage in 2016. According to the report, there are over 300 more approved CTE programs in the years since Measure 98′s passage.

At David Douglas High School in Southeast Portland, 11 CTE programs offer students a range of careers to try on — from cooking and working on cars to training in medicine or computer programming.

“You walk past a CTE classroom, you see kids hands-on, you see kids with smiles on their faces because they are enjoying what they are doing, they are connecting with the material,” said Assistant Principal Valoree Hill.

Hill said Measure 98 funded the return of a revamped construction CTE program, more connected with workforce demands in the field than before.

“Now it’s off and running,” Hill said. “We’re able to offer basic, intermediate, and advanced levels within our program.”

Like the state as a whole, David Douglas students who take CTE classes have a higher graduation rate than their peers who don’t. The graduation rate for students in the David Douglas Class of 2022 who earned at least two credits in a CTE program was 93.6% compared to the overall school graduation rate of 78.3% — a difference of more than 15 percentage points.

Another goal of the school’s CTE programming is to recruit nontraditional students into different areas of study, like including more female students in metals and manufacturing or having more male students in the education program.

“We really want our CTE programs to mirror what our student body looks like,” Hill said.

Increasing participation in CTE is one piece of a bigger plan to keep students engaged in school so that they will graduate, with a focus on underrepresented students. Hill said another goal is for all students — including low-income students and students who are culturally diverse — to feel connected and supported by staff.

“If kids feel engaged, they’re going to show up, and that’s how we get them across the finish line,” Hill said.

Another method of supporting Black male students comes from the English department. The school offers three English classes students can take in place of a regular English course: Black Studies, Latinx Studies, and Gender Studies. The Black Studies English class is co-taught with REAP, a Portland youth program, and is supported by Measure 98.

In addition to expanded programs and CTE equipment, Measure 98 funds several staff positions at David Douglas focused on helping high school students feel supported. David Douglas used Measure 98 money to hire a library media specialist who ensures students have access to culturally relevant materials and social workers students can go to for help.

Related: Students nationally continue to struggle with mental health. Here’s what support looks like at one Oregon high school

Measuring the impact of Measure 98′s funding model

Director Pope said Stand for Children is now asking two key questions: Is the current Measure 98 funding level of $800 per child — a figure that was set before the pandemic — enough to support the measure’s priorities in the wake of the pandemic? And has the integration of Oregon’s 2019 Student Investment Account blurred the focus of Measure 98?

The Student Investment Account, under the Student Success Act, is funded differently than Measure 98. The act’s funding comes from a new tax, which creates a bucket of money meant only for SSA spending.

Still, the SSA passage in 2019 did impact Measure 98 by helping secure full funding from state lawmakers.

With the SSA funding in the mix, it’s not entirely clear whether Measure 98 was the direct cause of the student improvements. Stand for Children, however, is comfortable claiming it was.

“It’s very possible that the Student Success Act, which was passed at a similar time, gave a boost,” said communications director Ayala. But they do believe the successes came directly from Measure 98 — it wasn’t just a coincidence. “We just don’t think that it’s likely that all of the exact spots Measure 98 aims to target happened to increase once Measure 98 got full funding. "

Regardless, Pope argues the Measure 98 model holds up.

“As policymakers and state leaders are being asked to provide more — more resources, more funding, more programs to schools — Measure 98 provides a solid model that shows how we should target funding towards research-proven strategies designed to achieve specific educational outcomes,” she wrote.

This is significant given several initiatives since Measure 98 have a similar structure. Money comes in through state funding. It’s then doled out to individual districts. And, theoretically, they receive and use all that money, and track their results to report back to the state.

A similar model will be used for the Early Literacy Success Initiative, an effort to overhaul how schools teach reading, as evidence mounted showing schools, including ones in Oregon, were using ineffective literacy approaches. Stand for Children Oregon also supports the early reading grant program, which, like Measure 98, has started with only some of the funding from the state that advocates say is needed.

But another lingering question is how successful these models are at actually holding school districts accountable. The measure’s creators, Stand for Children, argue Measure 98 has shed light on programs and forced school leaders to see the results.

“Part of what Measure 98 did is require districts to be consistent in their reporting,” Ayala said. “So, that, in and of itself, just having clarity on where the benchmarks are, has had an impact. [Some] districts are able to look and see that the numbers are not tracking with other districts the way they thought they were.”

Related: Reading debate highlights broader battle over who controls what’s taught in Oregon public schools

Some districts have been better than others at naming specific actions under their plans. This has been a big point for the Early Literacy grants too. Districts are often waiting to see what works and molding their plans around those successes. Ayala compares it to an employee setting performance goals they know they can reach.

“When we talked to [districts] one-on-one, they were pretty consistent about being able to pinpoint what from Measure 98 made a difference,” Ayala said. “It’s not like they don’t know. They just didn’t want to write it down to be publicly available, which on a certain level, I get.”

Still, the accountability component is important — not only in ensuring taxpayers’ dollars are being well spent but also so that district leaders can learn from others’ successes and difficulties.

As part of those accountability efforts, the Secretary of State’s office plans to complete an audit of the High School Success spending by the end of the year. The state released an earlier audit in December 2022 praising the state’s ongoing Measure 98 work.

In the future, it may be easier to see how districts are doing when it comes to meeting the goals of Measure 98. The state has pulled together all of the various state and federal funds that go to school districts — including Measure 98 — and now asks that school districts streamline their plans outlining how they intend to use all of these funds.

As schools continue to make use of their Measure 98 funds, goals are changing as the needs of students are shifting.

Creating an environment where students want to stay

Next year, David Douglas High School plans to build on its Measure 98-funded support for students with social-emotional lessons for all students. Teachers will lead weekly advisory classes to help “students understand how to set goals, how to advocate for themselves, how to be resilient and self-aware … focusing on all those pieces that are lifelong pieces,” Hill said.

“They’re not just what to be successful in school, but how to be successful in life and how to be true to yourself.”

As outlined in the district’s high school success plan, one of David Douglas’s goals was to increase its graduation rate by 5%. That hasn’t happened. Like the state’s graduation rate, Hill said the pandemic threw a wrench in reaching that goal — and students haven’t recovered yet.

“That continues to be a challenge, so we’re going to continue to push ourselves and we’re going to continue to push our kids because we know that they’re absolutely capable, and we want to continue to move that dial forward,” Hill said.

Teachers and administrators aren’t alone in setting high standards. Hill said student survey data showed students want more preparation when it comes to college and career planning. So next year, the plan is to bring in YouScience, a platform that includes aptitude tests and allows students to research potential colleges, careers and opportunities in the trades.

Hill is working on David Douglas’ next high school success plan, for 2025-27. She said the school will monitor and adjust its plans and goals to meet the students they’re serving.

“As our kids change, our programming is going to be fluid and change with it,” she said. “It’s really just about making sure the students we have in this moment are getting the best they need.”