One interesting aspect of the annual yearly progress reports is how the state calculated the "economically disadvantaged" students in each district.

Oregon Department of Education's Director of Communications Gene Evans said the proxy used to determine the "economically disadvantaged" student subgroup was one question on the state assessments: Do you have a computer at home with a connection to the Internet?

If a student said no, Evans said, that student was immediately classified as being "economically disadvantaged."

While many people have laughed over the use of that question as a determining factor, Evans said researchers swear it helps them get a fairly accurate figure for a district's poverty level.

Oregon will be changing its criteria for determining the "economically disadvantaged" subgroup in the future and plans to use districts' figures for students in the federal free and reduced lunch program once numbers become more concrete.

Here are the South Coast school districts' "economically disadvantaged" figures:

€ Bandon School District - 145 out of 740 students

€ Brookings-Harbor School District - 471 out of 1,702

€ Central Curry School District - 153 out of 696

€ Coos Bay School District - 915 out of 3,806

€ Coquille School District - 189 out of 1,036

€ Myrtle Point School District - 183 out of 764

€ North Bend School District - 387 out of 2,246

€ Port Orford-Langlois School District - 105 out of 384

€ Powers School District - 44 out of 142

€ Reedsport School District - 228 out of 842

€ Siuslaw School District - 415 out of 1,531

- Patti Richter, staff writer