Best High Schools in Zip Code 97838

ZIP code 97838 (Hermiston, Oregon) contains exactly one public high school — Hermiston High School, a large comprehensive campus serving grades 9–12 with 1,705 students as part of Hermiston School District 8 — so families here have a single high school option, and the useful benchmarks are the district and the state rather than any in-town rival.

The academic picture is mixed but not uniform. Because Oregon's OSAS test is given to 11th graders, the school's "All Grades" and "11th Grade" results are the same students: 45.6% proficient in English language arts, 16.5% in math, and 25.8% in science. Against the state's 11th-grade rates, that means ELA is essentially at parity (45.6% vs. 46.0%), while math sits at about 72% of the state rate (16.5% vs. 22.9%) and science at about 76% (25.8% vs. 33.8%). Graduation is a genuine strength: 85% of students graduate, above the state's 83%. The concern is attendance — 44.2% of students are chronically absent, compared with 34.5% district-wide and 33.5% statewide, meaning roughly one in two students misses enough school to be classified chronically absent. The student body is overwhelmingly economically disadvantaged (91.79% qualify for free/reduced-price lunch), and per-student spending is $21,165, with a 19.8-to-1 student-teacher ratio.

Rankings are the most striking signal: the school fell from the 67th percentile (88 of 270 schools, 3 stars) in 2024-25 to the 38th percentile (167 of 271, 2 stars) in 2025-26, even though the comparison pool barely changed in size. Meanwhile the district as a whole ranks in the 61st percentile with 3 stars, suggesting the high school is the relative weak link in an otherwise above-median district. In short: this is a school that reads and graduates at state level but lags in math and science, with absenteeism as the most likely systemic contributor. These figures reflect a single year of test data and one school, so they describe a snapshot rather than proof of cause and effect.