In Oregon, persistent student absenteeism is closing an already narrow window for learning, and advocates say teachers in the state literally don’t have time to catch students up because of its unusually short school year.
The state ranked below or well below the national average in math and reading for 4th grade and math in 8th grade on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Low student achievement prompted the state to overhaul its school accountability system in the past year, requiring districts to report and set goals for kindergarten attendance, 3rd grade English/language arts and 8th grade math proficiency, as well as the share of 9th graders on track to graduate and those who ultimately earn their diplomas.
But teachers and leaders say the state’s relatively short academic time mandates and chronically high absenteeism hamstring efforts to improve student learning. Oregon’s data suggest that shortening official instructional time may exacerbate the effects of student absenteeism on student achievement.
“When we every month send the message home to kids and families, ‘Guess what? It’s another no school day. Guess what? It’s another no school day,’ it sends that message home really powerfully that school is optional,” said Sarah Pope, the executive director of Stand for Children Oregon, a local advocacy group that commissioned a recent study on instructional time and student attendance in the state.
ECONorthwest, an economic policy research group in the state that completed the study for Pope’s group, analyzed school calendar and student attendance data from 165 school districts in Oregon (enrolling about 93 percent of the state’s K-12 public schoolchildren) in the summer of 2025 and January 2026. Researchers found Oregon school districts average 165 days per school year compared to the typical 180-day year nationwide—and districts that follow four-day-week schedules average as few as 135 days a year.
Oregon requires at least 900 instructional hours in K-8 and 990 hours in grades 9-11, compared to the nationwide average of 1,231 hours per school year. The study found Oregon students receive fewer hours of instruction than all but Hawaii, Maine, and Nevada.
The study also found that about 1 in 3 Oregon students were chronically absent in 2023-24, meaning they missed 10 percent of more of school days, far more than the roughly 1 in 4 students who were chronically absent nationwide, according ECOnorthwest.
All that missing time adds up. In a separate 2024 study, Brown University economist Matthew Kraft found that over their K-12 education, students in Oregon attend 1.4 fewer years of school than students in states like Illinois and Kansas, whose school years range from 181-186 days.
How Oregon’s short school year hurts teaching and learning
The short academic year can make it more difficult for districts to use programs and interventions designed for typical instructional time.
Commonly used curriculums and intervention programs often need adaptation to be used in the state, said Pope, of Stand for Children Oregon. “Very few districts here actually could meet what experts recommend in terms of kids’ time on task in these subject areas.”
When the 40,000-student Salem-Keizer public schools, the state’s second largest, adopts new curriculum materials, educators often have to overhaul the pacing guides to accommodate less instructional time.
“You can’t speed your way through content, so you have to figure out what you’re going to go deep on, what you’re going to skim or exclude,” said Salem-Keizer Superintendent Andrea Castañeda, who previously served in districts in Oklahoma and Rhode Island. “That’s a function of being in a state that does not prioritize the length of the school year or the length of the school day.”
Limited time also complicates labor contracts and squeezes time teachers have for collaboration, Castañeda said.
“Teachers need time to prep, they need time to plan, to think, to eat—all those things,” she said, and “we are already compressing more content than will generally fit into our shortened time here. We’re losing our ability for teachers to not merely deliver great instruction, but to do it in a way that is collaborative and team-based within the environment.”
Seventy-five teachers from the state’s Springfield district signed a formal complaint to the state this school year, arguing there was not enough time available to teach subjects like science and social studies in ways the state recommended. For example, an elementary teacher might only be able to teach 15 to 30 minutes of science or social studies or health per week, noted Mikell Harshbarger, a 5th grade teacher at Springfield’s Elizabeth Page Elementary School.
A state investigation into the complaint found the district complied with state curriculum standards, but has not reported on the potential effects of the state’s short academic year on instructional time; the teachers have appealed.
So far, though, declining enrollments and budget pressures have given little impetus to extend requirements for the school day or year. While Gov. Tina Kotek this month signed a new law requiring quarterly district updates on student attendance and warnings to parents whose students miss class regularly, the only extended-time proposals have focused on summer instruction.
It would take an additional $3 million per day to extend the 171 instructional days in Salem-Keizer, based on salary, transportation, and operating expenses, Castañeda said.
“It’s going to require a broad base of many people saying 171 days ... is not enough to accelerate our kids,” she said. “It would require legislators, advocates, a broad group of people to step forward and say, ‘this is a fiscal priority.’”
