Welcome to our annual schools guide—a comprehensive listing of 596 public and private schools in Multnomah, Clackamas, Washington, and Clark Counties. 

To help you understand the best educational options for your kids, we’ve gathered dozens of points of information, from demographics to dropout rates. We’re offering a laser focus on achievement data, showing how well students are doing on standardized tests in math, reading, writing, and science.

Why? Because this information is increasingly becoming crucial to how schools will be evaluated in the future. Over the past two years, in fact, the Oregon Department of Education has significantly toughened reading, math, and sciences standards in grades 3 through 8 to align them with expectations of high schools, and to make sure even younger students won’t hit snags on the way to graduation. 

“We want to ensure that we have a streamlined process for getting accurate information on how prepared students are—and to avoid any surprises,” says Crystal Greene of the ODE. “We don’t want them to get to high school, and go, ‘Wow, I’ve always done well in school before, but now I don’t know if I’m going to graduate.’”

But an even greater paradigm shift is yet to come: in 2014, Oregon will begin implementing a national set of achievement markers called the Common Core State Standards that will allow us to directly compare our schools with those in 44 other states (including neighboring Washington). Though at times controversial, proponents believe the new standards will not only make the reams of state achievement data more useful, but also help Oregon’s students become more competitive in a national job market. 

Download the expanded data below to see how your child’s school is doing. 

PDF  Oregon Public Schools Data

PDF  Washington Public Schools Data 

PDF  Oregon/Washington Private Schools Data