Summary:
Vernonia School District 47J is a small rural district in Vernonia, Oregon, and it contains just one high school: Vernonia High School, which serves grades 9–12 and enrolls 178 students at 1000 Missouri Ave. Because it is the district's only high school, there is no second local school to compare it with, so the most useful comparison is between the school and district and state averages. The district as a whole ranks 79 of 141 districts in Oregon, at the 44th percentile with 2 stars.
The headline for Vernonia High School is a dramatic one-year turnaround in state ranking. The school went from 222 of 270 high schools (18th percentile, 1 star) in 2024–2025 to 83 of 271 (69th percentile, 3 stars) in 2025–2026, a 139-position jump. Its 2025–2026 test scores show real strengths in reading and science: 66.7% of students met standards in English Language Arts (state: 43.8%) and 51.9% in Science (state: 30.6%). Math is the clear weak spot, with only 11.5% proficient compared with 19.4% district-wide and 32.9% statewide.
Other measures give parents important context. Chronic absenteeism is 47.3%, well above the district's 44.3% and the state's 33.5%, meaning nearly half of students miss enough school to be flagged. The graduation rate is 80.0%, matching the district and trailing the state (83.0%) by 3 percentage points. About 72.47% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, per-student spending is $24,829, and the student-teacher ratio is 17.5; the data set includes no state benchmarks for those three figures. Because enrollment is small, year-to-year swings can be large, and a single class of students can move the numbers noticeably. Still, the bottom line for families is a school showing strong progress in reading and science, with clear room to grow in math and attendance.
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