Summary
Putnam High School is a comprehensive 9–12 school of roughly 1,060 students in Milwaukie, Oregon — a suburban community southeast of Portland in Clackamas County — and one of the larger high schools in North Clackamas School District 12. For 2025–2026 it ranks 159th of 271 Oregon high schools (41st percentile, 2 stars), a clear rebound from 2024–2025 (214th, 21st percentile, 1 star) and 2023–2024 (26th percentile, 1 star). Its best year on record was 2014–2015, when it sat in the top fifth of Oregon high schools.
The clearest strength is graduation: 90.9%, which is above the district's 87.9% and the state's 83.0%, and has stayed remarkably stable for five years. The standout weakness is attendance — 40.5% of students are chronically absent, about 10 points above the district and 7 above the state, and worse than Clackamas High School (30.5%), Gladstone High School (36.8%), and West Linn High School (34.9%); only Milwaukie High School (48.5%) is worse nearby. Achievement also trails peers: grade-11 ELA is 37.7% versus 46.9% district and 46.0% state, science 28.5%, and math 22.5% — essentially at the state's 22.9%. ELA, not math, is the real academic gap.
Compared with Gladstone High, a demographically similar school 1.1 miles away, science is the sharpest gap (28.5% vs 38.5%). Putnam spends $21,612 per student with 23.8 students per teacher, yet it outperforms Milwaukie High on every achievement measure and on graduation while spending roughly $3,700 less per student. Nearly every student subgroup improved in 2025–2026, which is what makes the turnaround credible. For families, the most useful takeaways are that attendance is the highest-leverage issue, literacy is the academic priority, and the graduation rate is a genuine strength.
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