Marcola School District 79J

Marcola School District 79J is a small Oregon district with just three schools serving students from preschool through 12th grade: Teach-NW, an alternative K–12 school with 655 students; Marcola Elementary School, a PK–6 school with 139 students; and Mohawk High School, which serves grades 7–12 with 133 students. Total enrollment is 927, and because Teach-NW is so large, it accounts for roughly 71% of all students in the district.

Academically, the three schools look very different from one another. Teach-NW posts the strongest all-grade results in the district — 68.3% in ELA, 49.2% in math, and 57.7% in science — well above both district and state levels. Marcola Elementary (33.3% ELA, 23.4% math, 21.4% science) and Mohawk High (18.9% ELA, 7.7% math, under 5% science) both fall below district and state averages. Graduation rates run the opposite direction: Mohawk graduates 92.0% of students, above the district's 72.7% and the state's 83.0%, while Teach-NW graduates 61.0%. Mohawk's ranking history is also unusually volatile, dropping from 5 stars and the 90th percentile in 2024–2025 to 1 star and the 18th percentile in 2025–2026.

Spending and class size do not line up with test scores here. Mohawk has the highest per-student spending ($28,677) and lowest student-teacher ratio (12.6) but the lowest current proficiency, while Teach-NW spends the least ($3,615) with the highest ratio (31) and the highest proficiency. District chronic absenteeism is 8.4% versus the state's 33.5%, but the two traditional schools report higher rates (Marcola 18.4%, Mohawk 24.2%) than Teach-NW's 5.3%. Free/reduced lunch is 81.2% at Mohawk and 61.87% at Marcola, and is not reported for Teach-NW. Bright spots include Marcola's 3rd grade ELA (64.3%) and math (60%), and Teach-NW's 8th grade ELA (90%). Some grade-level values are suppressed by the state and should be read as unknown, not as zero.