How we estimate percentiles: Oregon high school

A clear explanation of the data and the method, so you can judge how much weight to give the numbers.

What the data is

Every number here comes from the Assessment Group Reports of the Oregon Department of Education, for the Smarter Balanced ELA and math tests Oregon gives in grade 11, in 2018, 2019 and 2022 to 2026. For each school, school district and the state, and for each test and year, these files give:

• the number of students who took the test and the number of students in each of the four achievement levels, and
• from those counts, an estimated average score: the center of the bell curve that best matches the share of students below each level’s cut score. Oregon does not publish average scores.

Hidden numbers. To protect small groups, Oregon hides a level’s number and its percentage together whenever it is small, so they can’t be worked out from the rest. A school with a hidden level does not appear for that test and year. The schools shown hold 88% to 99% of each year’s test takers (math has more hidden levels than ELA). The statewide row is Oregon’s own statewide total, which includes every student.

Who is counted

Grade 11 ELA and math are the Smarter Balanced tests Oregon gives its juniors each spring, counted at the school where they tested. In Oregon a parent can excuse a student from state tests, and many juniors don’t take them: in 2026 about three in four took them (76% for ELA, 73% for math), in 2018 and 2019 about 85%, and in 2022 about six in ten. So a percentile compares a score with the Oregon juniors who took the test that spring, not with every junior.

About 33,000 juniors took the ELA test and 31,000 the math test in 2026. Grade 11 ELA and math continue the same Smarter Balanced scale as grades 3 to 8.

How the percentile is estimated

The score range for each achievement level is published (e.g. for grade 11 math, Level 3 is 2628-2717). Given a score, we:

1. identify which achievement level the score falls in;
2. count everyone in the lower levels as scoring below;
3. within the score's own level, spread that level's students along the group's fitted curve (below) rather than evenly across the level's range. Students bunch up toward the middle of the scale, so an even spread would put too many of them out at the far ends of the lowest and highest levels.

That gives the percentile: the estimated share of students in the group who scored at or below the entered score.

About the smooth curve

The bell-like curve on each chart is a truncated-normal distribution fitted so that its area within each achievement level matches the level counts, centered on that estimated average score. It's there to visualize the shape of the group's scores. The level counts set the headline percentile (steps above); the curve only decides where inside the student's own level the line falls.

When a group's students all sit in one or two levels, the counts can't say how spread out their scores are. A curve that comes out too narrow is drawn no narrower than one fifth of the statewide spread, and inside the student's level the percentile spreads that level's students evenly instead. Fewer than one school result in a hundred gets a wide default curve. A few small and alternative schools, where nearly every student scored at Level 1, get a curve centered at the bottom of the scale.

Cut scores

Grade 11 ELA and math have four levels, and Levels 3 and 4 count as proficient. The cut scores are the same in every Smarter Balanced state and in every year here: for ELA, Level 2 starts at 2493, Level 3 at 2583 and Level 4 at 2682; for math, Level 2 starts at 2543, Level 3 at 2628 and Level 4 at 2718. They come from the Smarter Balanced technical report (every edition from 2018-19 to 2024-25) and Oregon’s own Achievement Standards Summaries (2017-18 and the current one). Oregon’s 2026 score range sheets print the same numbers, except that the ELA sheet shows Level 2 starting at 2494, one point off every other source; we use 2493.

Oregon prints the lowest level as starting at 0 and the highest as “or higher”, so the lowest and highest scores shown are the Smarter Balanced defaults for high school: 2299 to 2795 for ELA and 2280 to 2862 for math. The score range for each level, by year, is on the score guides.

The high-school progress report

The paid progress report puts every high-school test your child took in one table, with the percentile at each level from the school to the state, and charts each subject across the years.

• One line per subject. Grade 11 ELA and math are taken by the whole grade, on the same scale as grades 3 to 8, so each joins the earlier years of the same subject.
• Earlier years are compared statewide only. You can add your child’s grades 3-8 scores. The tool doesn’t know which middle school or district they attended, so those years are compared with every student in the state in that grade, not with this high school or its district.
• The report opens on the statewide view, the one level with a result for every test.

Limitations to keep in mind

• Percentiles are estimates, not official rankings. Treat a "62nd percentile" as "roughly the top 40%," not an exact standing.
• Small schools have small counts, so their estimates are noisier.
• Schools with a hidden level don’t appear for that test and year; their students are still in the state results.
• Many juniors are excused from testing, so the students who tested may not be typical of every junior.
• Not included: 2020 (no test, COVID); 2021, a federal-waiver year for which Oregon published no results; and grade 11 science, because Oregon does not publish the lowest and highest possible scores of its high-school science tests (both the current one and the OAKS test it replaced in 2019), which these charts need.
• Oregon is compared at the school, district and state levels.

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