Error affects Crook County graduation rates
Oregon’s graduation rates are the worst in the nation, at 72 percent, and Crook County School District ranked even worse than that. Just 30 percent of students in the district received a high school diploma in the latest school year.
But according to officials, there are many problems with that number.
“We had a miscalculation when we reported our numbers,” Crook County High School Principal Michelle Jonas said Friday.
The district failed to report 56 more who graduated from Crook County High.
“With them not being counted, the Oregon State Department of Education reported 48 percent, when truly — when those students should have been reported, that brings our graduation data to 79 percent,” Jonas said.
The mistake means the school’s graduation rate is 30 percentage points higher than reported, bringing Crook County High School above the state’s average.
Even the adjusted percentage does not make up for the rest of the district. The Insight School of Oregon, an online charter school, has a graduation rate of only 16 percent.
“You know, it is frustrating,” said Joal Hoff, assistant principal at Crook County High. “I know how hard our students work and how hard our teachers work and how everyone in the district is working so hard. But yet what gets reported really isn’t accurate.”
Insight charter school is hosted by the Crook County School District, but its students come from all over the state.
“The way the state reports the data is the unfortunate part. But that then reflects poorly on our school district, when they’re truly not students who live in Crook County at all,” Jonas said.
Three years after the school district signed the contract with the charter school, officials are contemplating whether to cut the ties.
“We have a three-year contract, and that comes up at the end of the school year,” said school board member Gwen Carr. “We have to choose as a district either to renew that contract or not, and we’re currently in the process of that.”
The school board holds a special meeting on the contract renewal decision next Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at the school district administration office, 471 NE Ochoco Plaza Drive.
