Gordon Russell Middle School

Gresham, OR · Grades 6–8

Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA

Neighborhood

Decoded Rank

All factors combined

1 star

OR statewide rating — the rank below is this school's statewide position

Bottom 15% decoded

#644 of 680

plausibly #552–668

Oregon schools

#322 · Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro metro — Oregon side

Achievement Rank

Raw test performance

Bottom 15% achievement

#628 of 680

Oregon schools

#325 · Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro metro — Oregon side

places from achievement to Decoded Rank

Scores look modest, and the school performs below what its context predicts.

Data confidence:Medium1170 students tested 9 years93% participation

Confidence is computed from sample size, year coverage, and participation rate. Higher confidence means the rank shift is stable across years and not driven by a single small cohort.

  • Tested students: total students with valid scores across all reported years.
  • Years of data: number of school years included. More years smooths year-to-year noise.
  • Participation: share of enrolled students who took the assessment. Low participation can bias scores.

What's driving this rank

Decoded Rank: #644 of 680

in Oregon schools

Each component below is scored on a 0–100 within-metro scale. A qualitative band summarizes where the school lands.

  • LowPerforms above what its context predictsCounts for 39% of the rank

    After accounting for income and demographics, does this school beat what the data would predict?

  • LowStudents gain ground year over yearCounts for 33% of the rank

    Are kids at this school learning faster than typical for the metro?

  • About averageEquity within the schoolCounts for 17% of the rank

    Are students clustered at similar levels, or split between top and bottom?

  • StrongMost students were testedCounts for 11% of the rank

    Was the rank computed against a representative share of the school's students?

Show the numbersFor the methodology-curious

Each component is converted to a 0–100 within-metro percentile (100 = top of the metro). "Contribution" is the percentile-points the component adds to (or subtracts from) the metro median before the schools are re-ranked into the composite.

Per-component contributions to this school's Decoded Rank composite. Weight is the share each component carries; percentile is the school's within-metro score on that component.
ComponentWeightPercentileContribution
Performs above what its context predicts 39%5-17.3
Students gain ground year over year 33%15-11.7
Equity within the school 17%53+0.5
Most students were tested 11%93+4.8

How the Decoded Rank composite is computed

Why trust this?
  • Public data sources
  • Context-adjusted model
  • Confidence shown
  • Methodology published

This score uses state assessment data, NCES enrollment data, and Census ACS 5-year neighborhood data. The Decoded Rank adjusts for school context — student demographics, ELL/SPED service rates, and the socioeconomic profile of the surrounding tract — and shows how the school performs relative to expectation, not in absolute terms.

SchoolDecoder is one signal, not a verdict. Decoded Rank is a context-adjusted residual, not a causal claim about teaching quality. See full methodology →

Strongest Subjects (Decoded)

Decoded rank first; achievement rank in parentheses. Sorted by decoded rank, best first. Science is shown for reference only and is not part of any rank, tier, or composite.

  1. Science

    2025 proficiency13.5%meeting standard

    Tested gradeGrade 8

    224 tested

    202223.1%202319%202412.2%202513.5%

    Shown for reference only — science is not part of any rank.

All Rankings

How this school ranks across the metro, state, and among demographic peers.

ScopeAchievementDecodedShift
OR (680 schools)#628#644
Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA (345 schools)#325#322
Among similar schools (6 peers)#6#6

Resource context

School inputs, not ranking points

These fields describe the school and surrounding neighborhood. They help readers interpret the page, but this is not a dollar-by-dollar or ratio-by-ratio scorecard and the fields here are not components of the Decoded Rank.

Enrollment
633
Free/reduced-price lunch
83.6%
Student-teacher ratio
19.8:1
Locale
Suburb, large
School type
Regular public school
Enrollment model
Neighborhood attendance area
Neighborhood median income
$101,476ACS tract proxy
Neighborhood poverty
5.9%ACS tract proxy
SES index
60.4
Assessment data year
2025
CCD year
2024
ACS vintage
2020-2024

Within Gresham-Barlow SD 10J: #14 of 16.Bottom quintile in district. View district

Performance Spread

How students are distributed across the four state-assessment proficiency levels — L1: below standard, L2: approaching, L3: meets (proficient), L4: exceeds. This describes the shape of results at the school, not their height.

Students at this school cluster closely on the proficiency ladder.

  • Level 1 — Below standard60%
  • Level 2 — Approaching standard22%
  • Level 3 — Meets standard (proficient)13%
  • Level 4 — Exceeds standard5%

Performance Spread measures how evenly students are distributed across the L1..L4 proficiency ladder, treating the levels as an ordered scale (L1=1, L2=2, L3=3, L4=4) and weighting each by its student share. A school where most students cluster at one level has a TIGHT spread; a school split between the bottom and top has a WIDE or BIMODAL spread. Bimodal fires only when BOTH tails are non-trivial AND the middle is relatively hollow (pct_L1 ≥ 15, pct_L4 ≥ 25, pct_L2 + pct_L3 ≤ 60). It describes shape — NOT how high the school's scores are. Methodology

Nearby Schools

Sorted by distance. Both rank columns shown so you can compare quickly.

SchoolRatingAchievementDecodedShiftStoryConfidence
Powell Valley Elementary School#289#333Medium
Springwater Trail High SchoolRank withheld
Hogan Cedars Elementary School#252#181High
Kelly Creek Elementary School#267#302High
Dexter McCarty Middle School#253#164High

Similar Schools

Schools with comparable demographics, income, and size. Both rank columns shown for direct comparison.

SchoolRatingAchievementDecodedShiftStoryConfidence
East Gresham Elementary School#269#316High
Oakdale Middle School#26#35Medium
Pacific Ridge Elementary School#1#2High
McLoughlin Middle School#27#14High
Patton Middle School#206#27High

Historical Ranks

Year-by-year decoded and achievement ranks. Pandemic-affected years are excluded — we don't interpolate scores across the gap.

YearAchievementDecodedShift
2025#325#322
2024#313#332
2023#288#314

Note: assessment transitions (where a state changes its test) are footnoted on the methodology page; trends are not computed across breakpoints.

Trajectory

Not used in the Decoded Rank — shown for context only.

2023: percentile 122024: percentile 42025: percentile 5

Holding steady

Based on 3 years (2023–2025).

Slope: -3.7 pct/yr (95% CI -36.7 to 29.2)

Low confidence

How this works: we fit a linear trend across the available years of Decoded percentile, then bucket the slope into a direction. Wide confidence intervals (uncertain trends) collapse to Holding steady. See the methodology page for thresholds.

Cohort Progression

Kids who started 6th grade here in 2023 lost 21 proficiency points by 8th grade — declining about 9× faster than the metro median.

Based on 18 cohorts across math + ELA.

Learning rate: -5.1 proficiency points/yr (95% CI -11.3 to 1.1)

Medium confidence

Cohort 201520162017201820192022202320242025 Slope
ELA · started 8th in 2015
G8
250
—
ELA · started 7th in 2015
G7
261
G8
247
-14.3
ELA · started 6th in 2015
G6
254
G7
249
G8
239
-7.5
ELA · started 6th in 2016
G6
230
G7
237
G8
230
+0.2
ELA · started 6th in 2017
G6
237
G7
248
G8
235
-1.0
ELA · started 6th in 2018
G6
245
G7
236
-9.2
ELA · started 6th in 2019
G6
246
—
ELA · started 8th in 2022
G8
216
—
ELA · started 7th in 2022
G7
232
G8
204
-27.3
ELA · started 6th in 2022
G6
213
G7
192
G8
186
-13.7
ELA · started 6th in 2023
G6
189
G7
190
G8
167
-10.7
ELA · started 6th in 2024
G6
162
G7
193
+31.1
ELA · started 6th in 2025
G6
167
—
Math · started 8th in 2015
G8
224
—
Math · started 7th in 2015
G7
226
G8
234
+7.4
Math · started 6th in 2015
G6
214
G7
225
G8
196
-9.2
Math · started 6th in 2016
G6
197
G7
206
G8
190
-3.6
Math · started 6th in 2017
G6
212
G7
215
G8
208
-1.8
Math · started 6th in 2018
G6
215
G7
216
+0.4
Math · started 6th in 2019
G6
202
—
Math · started 8th in 2022
G8
158
—
Math · started 7th in 2022
G7
186
G8
168
-17.9
Math · started 6th in 2022
G6
174
G7
159
G8
135
-19.4
Math · started 6th in 2023
G6
143
G7
154
G8
142
-0.4
Math · started 6th in 2024
G6
150
G7
161
+11.0
Math · started 6th in 2025
G6
147
—

How this works: we follow each grade-cohort across years through the school (3rd graders in 2023 are 4th graders in 2024, etc.) and fit a linear slope on a 100–400 proficiency-points scale built from the state assessment's four levels (L1=1, L2=2, L3=3, L4=4, weighted by student share). This is the same construction Stanford SEDA uses (edopportunity.org/methods); it's not student-level tracking — we measure the school's cohort, not individuals. See the methodology page for thresholds.

Evidence & technical detailClick to expand

School Alpha

School Alpha is the residual between actual and expected performance once school context is held constant. It is a context-adjusted estimate, not a causal claim about teaching quality. Its reliability shows up on the page as the confidence label and the rank interval, not as a standalone statistic.

SES index components

SES method
Blended SES index (ACS + FRL)
SES index value
60.4
FRL %
83.6%
ELL %
26.0% · OR ODE At-A-Glance (Ever English Learners)
SPED %
17.0% · OR ODE At-A-Glance
Tract median income (ACS 5-year)
$101,476
Tract poverty rate
5.9%
Tract % bachelor's+
24.5%

What "Decoded Rank" means

Decoded Rank converts School Alpha — the context-adjusted residual — into a parent-facing rank within the metro pool. A higher Decoded Rank than Achievement Rank means the school's raw scores understate its performance once neighborhood and school context are held constant. The reverse means raw scores overstate it. The rank is one signal, not a verdict.

Data & sources

Assessment data
2024–25 school year
NCES CCD vintage
2024
Census ACS 5-year vintage
2020-2024
Last updated
September 4, 2026
Methodology version
0.14.0

Cross-state metro note: This metro spans state lines. Both states use Smarter Balanced assessments with a common scale for grades 3–8 ELA/math. Context-adjusted ranks are computed within each state's testing context, then aggregated across the metro.

Source files (3)

SchoolDecoder publishes context-adjusted residuals, not causal estimates. Decoded Rank is one signal — not a verdict on teaching quality. Read about limitations →