On Apr. 15, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed an executive order requiring the state and school districts to take steps to increase student instruction time. For Oregon students, this is the second major change to education policy that Gov. Kotek has enacted through executive order this school year, following the changes to phone policy earlier in the school year. As some school districts were cutting days to try to balance budgets for next year, the order requires schools to restore days back up to the levels they were during the 2024-25 school year and limits them from cutting hours in the future.
“Oregon ranks 47th in the nation in instructional time requirements, five percent below the national average,” Gov. Kotek wrote in the executive order. “It is the responsibility of the State and Superintendent of Public Instruction to ensure all Oregon students have access to high-quality instructional time.”
While classroom hours are very important to student development, Oregon is all but ignoring a larger problem within our schools: chronic absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing 10 percent or more of school, around 17 days on average in Oregon schools. While Oregon has acted quickly on banning phones and increasing school days, Salem’s reaction to the growing truancy problem has been slow, to say the least. The strongest piece of action so far is SB315, which only requires the Oregon department of education to create recommendations to address the problem by May 31.
Quite simply, it doesn’t matter whether a person is on their phone at school, or even how many classroom hours they receive if they aren’t at school in the first place. While the rise of Canvas has allowed students to complete some assignments from home, it still doesn’t allow students to learn to the same degree, evidenced by Oregon’s sharp regression in reading and math scores following online school during the pandemic. What can be done? Without enforcing truancy laws, which are unfeasible for Oregon, schools can try to make parents more aware of the importance of attendance, and come up with new ways like text messages or letters to connect with parents. Administrators can also work to try to make school a place where students actually want to come to, and take steps to address reasons why students aren’t coming to school: issues like physical and mental health, students feeling unsafe at school, or family responsibilities.
Article by Oscar Guillemin