High School Dropout Rate – Portland, Oregon

Droupouts in Portland Public Schools are entrenched pattern, By Betsy Hammond, July 25, 2010, The Oregonian: “People in other big-city school districts around the country have a hard time thinking of Portland Public Schools as a truly urban district. Not only is Portland tiny (47,000 students, compared with 700,000 in Los Angeles), but only 43 percent of its students are poor (in Chicago, 85 percent are). A majority are white (in Philadelphia, 13 percent are). What’s more, middle- and upper-income professionals in Portland do something their counterparts in Detroit, L.A. or Washington, D.C., rarely consider: They send their children to central-city public schools. But there is one way in which our small, mostly white, heavily middle-class school system is statistically right in line with some of the grittiest urban districts in the nation: A shockingly low share of Portland’s high school students earn diplomas…”