Slinging mud in the Gorge

By Julia Shumway | Editor

More than one-third of Oregon students missed more than three weeks of school last year, the second-highest rate of chronic absenteeism in the country. The U.S. Department of Education has long required schools to report their absenteeism rates to track trends and evaluate efforts to get kids to stay in class, but a new federal report found that the department is no longer reliably gathering that data.

Also in today's edition:

Data centers spur mudslinging in the Gorge
Wildfire commentary

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Data centers take center stage, spur mudslinging, in competitive Gorge-based Oregon House race

By Alex Baumhardt

A driver passes a Google data center campus in The Dalles, Oregon. (Photo by Jordan Gale/Oregon Capital Chronicle)

A Republican Wasco County Commissioner who helped usher in two decades of Google data center development in The Dalles is running campaign ads painting his Democratic opponent for an Oregon House seat as an underhanded supporter of corporate tax breaks for data centers.

K-12 spending, absenteeism programs face risks as feds stop key monitoring, watchdog says

By Robbie Sequeira | Stateline

Fourth graders sit at their classroom tables in Oklahoma City. A new government watchdog report raises concerns about oversight of education spending and absenteeism data. (Photo by Nuria Martinez-Keel/Oklahoma Voice)

The U.S. Department of Education’s suspension this year of a comprehensive monitoring process puts billions of K-12 dollars at heightened risk of undetected waste, fraud and abuse, according to a new report by the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office.