“High-quality instruction” is a jargony education phrase. But it starts with a simple intention:

“100% engagement,” said Emily Pozos, vice principal at Metzger Elementary in the Tigard-Tualatin School District. “So whether you’re talking, listening, writing, reading, 100% of your class is doing it. It can look like nonverbal responses, ‘thumbs up’, ‘thumbs down’, ‘3-2-1’, ‘agree’, ‘disagree.’”

At Metzger this past spring, small groups of students sat at tables with an adult, working on reading. Each group might be at different levels in their reading, but they were all engaged.

As a dual-language school, Metzger has students learning and reading Spanish, as well as English.

In both languages, teachers run lessons so that students build understanding by participating. At one table, students talked about water before they read a book about it.

“It gives us energy!” one student said. “It’s stuff to help us so that the animals and us can survive,” another added.

Then they start reading all together, a chorus of little voices.

“Mi gusta el agua.”

Across the room, another group is practicing their letter sounds with a teacher.

“It’s kind of noisy, but it works,” said Joyce Haner, a literacy specialist at Metzger.

These strategies and methods have been effective at Metzger. At the state level, English Language Arts test scores haven’t improved over the past few years, but they have at Metzger. The latest results show 48% of Metzger fourth graders meeting or exceeding standards, up from 34% in the 2021-2022 school year. Schoolwide, scores have increased seven percentage points.

Gov. Tina Kotek’s executive order to keep school districts from cutting school days earlier this year shined a light on Oregon’s short school year. But education advocates say instructional time is just one key to helping students succeed. They point out two other critical components: getting students to come to school and making sure they receive high-quality instruction in class.

As a state, Oregon has been less prescriptive about instructional quality and attendance. But two Oregon school districts are taking things into their own hands using state resources.

One of those resources is the Oregon Response to Instruction and Intervention project, a statewide effort to help teachers support students’ literacy needs. Northwest Regional Education Service District’s Laurel Fischer oversees the program.

“Regardless of how many days or hours are in the school year, right now, what’s in our locus of control is being able to teach really effectively with the time that we do have,” Fischer said.

School districts can join a cadre of other districts where their teachers can receive support for four years. Since it started in 2005, Oregon RTII has worked with over 100 districts in the state.

“They cover everything from science to reading that might have been missed in a teacher prep program, and so we can come together and learn and then take that back to our schools,” Haner said of the program.

Teachers use strategies to engage students, but not every kid gets it the first time. Through regular assessments and staff meetings, teachers can identify the students who need more help.

“It’s an entire system that I like to think of as like a safety net that ensures that no matter what teacher you have or no matter what elementary school you go to in TTSD, kids are getting a guaranteed and viable experience,” said Jessica Swindle, former Metzger principal and current Tigard-Tualatin administrator.

High-quality instruction in reading is important because it’s a building block that allows you to access other subjects. Jesebel Centeno, a biliteracy specialist at Metzger, says the tools they employ are a “key” for everything from math to social-emotional learning to challenges outside the classroom.

“We provide those tools so they can unlock it and they’ll be able to use those tools in the outside world,” Centeno said.

Oregon’s other challenge: chronic absenteeism

In the years after COVID-19 sent Oregon students home, schools struggled not just to catch students up academically, but to get them back in the habit of attending school every day.

Oregon’s rate of chronic absenteeism, or students missing 10% or more of school days, reached a high of 38.1% in the 2022-2023 school year. By the latest count, Oregon still has the second-worst rate of any state in the country at 33.5%.

Andy Boe, superintendent of the Elkton School District in Douglas County, recalled trying to serve students virtually during that time, even after schools reopened. He said the district was “too accommodating.”

“We kind of tried to maintain some of those things that really, we probably shouldn’t have,” Boe said. “We probably should have pivoted back to ‘hey, it’s really important that you’re here. It’s safe now.’”

In Elkton, attendance dropped by 10 percentage points between 2018-2019 and 2024-2025.

Boe noticed more students starting to disengage in middle school. With so much attention on the youngest learners in elementary school, and concerns about graduation at high school, middle school took a backseat. Boe said priorities can change for students, too.

“They have a little bit more agency over whether they come to school or not,” Boe said. “Their lives are really hard because it’s adolescence, and we’re going through all these changes.”

Amy Rose works with Boe as the assistant superintendent for the Douglas Education Service District and director of school improvement. She said middle school is a time students start to question the value of school.

“It’s a time where kids, they don’t know what they want to do when they grow up, and they kind of lose that relevance,” Rose said. “Like, ‘why does this matter? Why does school matter?’”

Countywide, middle school attendance was a challenge, too. The Douglas ESD already had two mentors working in high school, but they soon received funding for a third through an Oregon Department of Education grant. While writing that grant, they confirmed they had a problem in the middle grades: “In 2024-25, more than 1 in every 3 middle schoolers in Douglas County — over 1,000 students — was chronically absent”.

All of the mentors shifted to support students in sixth through twelfth grades, providing an extra adult for students to connect with through their teenage years in school.

“He’s like the most positive person that I’ve ever met,” Rose said of one of the three ESD mentors. “He was a former high school volleyball coach. He just has a lot of positive energy about life.”

Another mentor struggled in high school and is able to relate to students who are dealing with conflicts. The third mentor is a “cool, hip, thirty-something mom” who can relate to students who identify as female, Rose said.

“It’s just remembering and understanding what it’s like to be young, and those feelings, and helping kids work through it,” Rose said.

Being a mentor for middle schoolers is about listening to them, helping them find solutions, helping them see their futures and consistently being there. It’s intensive, one-on-one work.

In Elkton, the mentors meet with each student for about 10-15 minutes. Boe says it’s “messy work” to mentor middle schoolers and requires adults to be supportive and work on solutions, without getting drawn into adolescent drama. But it pays off.

“That person being consistent in their life really has an impact on the buy-in and then eventually the attendance or whatever other skill,” Boe said.

In Elkton, attendance is up significantly. According to district data shared with OPB, 24% of students were chronically absent in the 2025-2026 school year, compared to 41% the previous year.

The district now has another mentor working with students in grades 6-12, as well as an elementary school mentor.

Small investment, big results

The conversation around Oregon’s school year revolves around money. When school districts cut instructional time, it’s invariably to save money. Conversely, if Oregon’s school year becomes longer, it will cost school districts more. One superintendent said extending the school year would cost Oregon an additional $50 million per day.

The funding streams that supported the investments in improving instruction in Tigard-Tualatin and boosting attendance in Elkton are minuscule compared to the costs of a longer school year. Oregon RTII received $2.8 million for the 2025-2027 biennium. Elkton and Douglas ESD’s mentor program came out of a $4 million bucket for attendance-related programming between community organizations and schools.

As the superintendent of a rural school district, Boe gets frustrated by the instructional time conversation. He says it ignores the financial reality in districts, where classroom instruction is one of the many things a district pays for.

“We will take as much time, gladly, as the state will fund, to have kids in schools,” Boe said.

“There are all these other things that have to get taken care of before we put kids first here … kids need to be first. They need to be in school. They need to be with us in front of highly trained and caring teachers who have given their life to do this.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/09/01/the-length-of-oregon-school-year-isnt-everything-why-attendance-instruction-matter-too/