Summary:
Three high schools serve grades 9–12 in Greater Albany Public School District 8J in Albany, Oregon, together enrolling 2,899 students. Two are large comprehensive high schools — South Albany High School (1,466 students) and West Albany High School (1,297) — while the third, Albany Options School (136 students), is a small option setting. The district is rated 3 stars, ranked 50th of 141 districts.
West Albany High School is the academic standout: a 95.1% graduation rate, the lowest chronic absenteeism in the group at 29.4% (below both the district's 34.8% and the state's 33.5%), and the strongest ELA (68.4%) and science (43.2%) proficiency. Its math, however, is 30.2% — below the state's 32.9% — making an unusually wide, roughly 38‑point gap between ELA and math. Its state percentile rank has also slipped from 94th to 91st to 79th.
South Albany High School is more uneven: ELA proficiency of 49.7% beats the state, but math is 11.6% (state 32.9%) and science 20.7%. Its 83.9% graduation rate sits essentially at the state even though 47.6% of students are chronically absent, 14.1 points above the state. Albany Options School serves a clearly different population: 41.3% graduation, 80.0% chronic absenteeism, ELA of 8.3%, and math and science under 5%. Notably, free/reduced‑lunch rates are nearly identical across all three schools (about 76%–78%), yet outcomes differ enormously — and absenteeism lines up exactly with graduation and test results in every case.
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