Oregon school safety

Oregon's 2021-22 paperwork mostly holds up. Seventy-two schools in the state fall into the two grades we call doubtful — D or E, meaning schools of the same size teaching the same grade levels normally report several incidents, or ten or more, and these reported almost none. That works out to 5.6% of Oregon schools. Nationally, the same share is 11.3%.

That gap is worth reading carefully, because it is easy to read wrong. It does not mean Oregon children are safer than children elsewhere. This collection measures what districts wrote down, not what happened. A lower doubtful share means fewer Oregon records we cannot verify — better filing, not better outcomes. We do not adjust the comparison for state, because differences between states in this data are differences in reporting behavior.

What you can get from this page is narrow and real: whether a particular school's incident reporting is consistent with what similar schools across the country report, and if it is, how it ranks. We compare each school to roughly 1,500 American schools closest to it in enrollment that teach the same grades. Among the peers that reported anything, we take the 25th percentile — a deliberately low bar. Clear that bar and the school gets a published safety score. Of Oregon's 1,290 schools, 895 have one.

The rest show no score, and that is the method working rather than a hole in it. A C means a school reported almost nothing but is small enough that a true zero is common — not implausible, but not evidence of safety either. D and E mean the reported figure does not match what schools that size normally file. In none of those cases do we have enough to stand behind a number, so we do not publish one.

Why only 51 districts are ranked

Oregon has 204 school districts. Most are too small to produce enough scoreable schools to rank, so 51 appear in the district comparison. Among them, Sherwood SD 88J ranks safer than 99% of ranked US districts, with 6 of the 7 schools in its scored set complete enough to score. Central SD 13J, Beaverton SD 48J and Tigard-Tualatin SD 23J each rank safer than 98% — Central with 5 of 5 in its scored set, Beaverton with 45 of 56, Tigard-Tualatin with 15 of 18. Newberg SD 29J ranks safer than 96%, with 5 of 9. Where a district's scored set is thin, treat its rank as a partial picture.

Safest ranked cities in Oregon

Percentile is against all ranked U.S. cities (higher = safer). Only cities with ≥5 trustworthy-data schools are ranked. Home value is Zillow's ZHVI.

Safest ranked districts

Every Oregon city with schools

Every Oregon school district