Audit: More Work Needed to Improve High School Success Program, Internal Oversight

Video Statement from Secretary Read

The Oregon Department of Education should continue its progress toward fully implementing recommended improvements to the High School Success program, as well as establish internal oversight to identify problems and track efforts to fix them, auditors found.

In an audit released today, Oregon Secretary of State auditors found that of the eight recommendations they made in 2024 to improve the program, only one recommendation was implemented and progress on the others varied. The deadline for implementation of these recommendations is June 2027. One recommendation with an earlier deadline was determined not to be implemented. Auditors also concluded that the agency lacked a documented process to track their progress fixing issues and lacked an explicit oversight body to review their work.

"Oregon's students deserve programs that deliver results, and Oregonians deserve to know that their tax dollars are making a difference," Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read said. "My office will keep working to make sure Oregon's schools are held accountable for giving our students every chance to succeed."

The High School Success program (Measure 98) was passed by voters in 2016 to address chronically low graduation rates and expand opportunities that help students prepare for post-secondary education and careers.

The program provides grants to high schools to support three categories of activities: dropout prevention, career and technical education, and college-level learning opportunities.

The recommendations from two years ago included:

• Improve collection of data to better connect strategies to results, identify effective investments, and find barriers that lawmakers can resolve.
• Ensure grant eligibility requirements align with the intent of Measure 98 and develop a process to evaluate if high school programming meets those goals.
• Develop a plan to document and share strategies statewide that were effective in achieving better outcomes or overcoming common challenges.

The recommendation that the agency failed to implement was to report to lawmakers by the 2026 legislative session on what's working and where the program still faces challenges.

The majority of the remaining recommendations have an implementation completion date of June 2027, and agency leadership says they are on track to meet that timeline.

However, the agency lacks a documented process for tracking progress on addressing the issues raised by the 2024 audit, so it is unclear whether the agency is reasonably on track to fully implement the recommendations on time.

Internal oversight will also be helpful in allowing the agency to catch small problems before they grow instead of relying on periodic external audits for review.

The Oregon Secretary of State's office will continue to track the agency's progress.