It wasn’t so long ago that Oregon voters routinely ranked public education tops on their collective priority list, a key issue upon which they wanted policymakers in Salem to be laser focused.
Not anymore.
In a new survey of 500 Oregon residents conducted by independent Portland-based polling firm DHM Research, which shared the results with The Oregonian/OregonLive, only 2% of respondents identified education as a top concern, far below the handful of inextricably linked topics that have come to dominate the state’s political conversations: homelessness, mental health and the costs of housing and living.
The collective shrug comes as data suggests a clear crisis in the state’s public school system, with chronic absenteeism at record highs and reading and math test scores mired in dismal post-pandemic lows. If students are not reading proficiently by third grade — as some 60% of the state’s 8 and 9-year-olds are not — they are statistically far more likely to struggle in middle and high school, and to be unprepared for college or a career.
Oregon schools still consume a big chunk of the state’s budget, around 30%, and Gov. Tina Kotek over the summer proposed changes to the funding formula used to determine how much each district receives that could add an extra $515 million to schools’ bottom line.
Still, education has slipped far down in the public consciousness since 2004, when 30% of respondents told DHM’s pollsters that it was the most important issue facing the state, or even since 2017, when 18% put schools at the top of their list.
The new DHM poll surveyed 500 Oregonians of voting age and has a margin of error of 4.4%. Seventy-two percent of the poll’s respondents were white, about a third were registered Democrats, 23% are Republicans and the remainder were unaffiliated or belonged to a third party. Forty-four percent were from the Portland metro area and 26% had children under 18 living at home.
The poll was conducted between Sept. 26 and Oct. 1.
Among the poll’s key findings:
- 60% of respondents said they felt “positively inclined” toward their local school district, a relatively high level of satisfaction during a time when school districts have had to make painful budget cuts, contemplate school closures and publicly negotiate labor contracts with teachers.
- 51% of respondents said they felt positively toward teacher unions, which are among the state’s most powerful backers of the Democratic party. Another third told pollsters they had more negative feelings about educator unions while 15% did not know or had no opinion.
- 49% had a positive view of the Oregon Department of Education, while 39% told pollsters they felt either very or somewhat negative about the agency and the remainder had no opinion.
Poll respondents also said they felt that high school graduation rates were the single best way to measure whether their local school system was effective, despite a firestorm of criticism over the state school board of education’s decision to suspend requirements that students show basic mastery of reading, writing and math in order to receive a diploma, via a standardized test or a more in-depth project.
About half of respondents said that standardized test scores are an important metric to determine a school’s quality. A new batch of scores were released last week and showed that Oregon students overall have made almost no progress in making up for the pandemic era’s learning losses.
The poll’s results were inconclusive about school management decisions during the COVID era, when Oregon school buildings were closed for full-time school longer than almost anywhere else in the country.
Sixty percent of respondents said schools in their area had properly handled the pandemic’s risks, but about half of those polled also said they felt that schools had been “too concerned” about the health risks of COVID and 60% said schools had not been concerned enough about either student learning or their emotional health and well-being during that same period.
Respondents did agree, however, that the pandemic’s long tail still has a significant impact on today’s students. About six in 10 respondents told pollsters that students fell behind academically and emotionally during the pandemic and that they continue to struggle.
— Julia Silverman covers education for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach her via email at jsilverman@oregonian.com. Follow her on x.com at @jrlsilverman.