The Oregon Quality Education Commission released its 2026 biennial report recommending that lawmakers allocate between $13.8 billion and $16.2 billion for the State School Fund in the 2027-29 biennium. The lower figure would maintain current services and avoid cuts; the higher figure would meet full quality goals including a 90 percent four-year graduation rate and improved third-grade literacy and eighth-grade math proficiency. The current 2025-27 appropriation is $11.359 billion, making the avoid-cuts figure a 42 percent increase.
Historical funding gap
The commission was created by the Oregon Legislature in 1999 to research best practices and calculate the cost of a quality education. Since its first report in 1999, lawmakers have never fully funded the commission's recommendation. The gap between the recommended amount and actual state funding has fluctuated. It stood at 23.9 percent in the 1999-01 biennium, peaked at 38.0 percent in 2011-13 during the recession, narrowed to 6.0 percent in 2021-23, a biennium in which Student Success Act grant funding was in place, then widened to 26.9 percent in the 2023-25 biennium, according to the commission's 2022 report and legislative records.
Research evidence
The QEM's cost estimates are built on a professional judgment methodology that convenes expert educators to specify the resources needed to achieve outcome goals. The model uses prototype schools with specific class-size targets: 15 to 17 pupils per class in kindergarten through third grade. Oregon's actual median class sizes in 2024-25 were 20 in kindergarten, 21 in grade 1, 22 in grade 2, and 23 in grade 3, according to the 2026 QEM report.
The class-size target is grounded in the Tennessee STAR study, a randomized experiment that found smaller classes in early elementary grades produced short- and long-term benefits, with extra gains for poor, minority, and male students. The QEM report notes that class-size reduction is a major cost driver and that educators continue to cite large classes as a barrier to learning.
A 2023 legislative review of the QEM methodology noted that model changes had increased the cost without always corresponding to measurable outcome recommendations, which the review called a limitation when comparing gaps across biennia. The QEM itself describes its model as a professional judgment approach enhanced with statistical analysis, not intended to dictate local spending but to establish an empirical baseline for state resource adequacy.
The 2026 report made no discretionary changes to model inputs beyond updating costs and enrollment data. The avoid-cuts figure of $13.8 billion is approximately $1.3 billion higher than a similar estimate from budget analysts at the Oregon Department of Administrative Services, as reported by the Oregonian.