Best Public Schools in Union, OR

The city of Union, Oregon is home to two schools - Union Elementary School and Union High School, both part of the Union School District 5. While Union Elementary has struggled with low academic performance and high chronic absenteeism, Union High School has emerged as the standout, consistently ranking higher in statewide rankings and outperforming the state average in key proficiency metrics.

Union High School has a 4-year graduation rate of 81.8% and has ranked as high as 38th out of 268 Oregon high schools in the 2023-2024 school year. In the 2024-2025 school year, the high school outperformed the state average in English Language Arts proficiency for both 11th grade (50% vs 44.4%) and 7th grade (47.1% vs 44.2%) students. Similarly, Union High School had higher math proficiency rates than the state average for 11th grade (25% vs 20.3%) and 7th grade (29.4% vs 31.5%) students.

In contrast, Union Elementary School has struggled, ranking in the bottom half of Oregon elementary schools in the past three years and maintaining a 2-star rating from SchoolDigger. Both schools have high chronic absenteeism rates, over 34% at each, which likely contributes to the academic performance challenges. Additionally, there is a significant gap in math proficiency between the two schools, with Union Elementary students scoring 13.6-34.6% proficient in math versus 31.8-45.5% in ELA, and Union High School students scoring 25-29.4% proficient in math versus 35.7-50% in ELA.