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David Douglas High School

high school in Oregon, United States

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ5233051 ↗
Source-derived summary

David Douglas High School (DDHS) is a public high school in Portland, Oregon, United States. It is the only high school in the David Douglas School District.

History

The school is named after 19th-century Scottish botanist David Douglas, namesake of such Pacific Northwest species as the Douglas fir. Originally established in 1954, enrollment at DDHS increased quickly in subsequent years as development in suburban Portland expanded, eventually becoming one of the largest high schools in the area.

In 1998 Lynn Olson, author of The School-to-work Revolution: How Employers And Educators Are Joining Forces To Prepare Tomorrow's Skilled Workforce, said that David Douglas was "a clean, orderly, comfortable school, the kind that sprouted up all over the country in the baby boom years of the 1950s and 1960s."

In 2009 around 20 students at David Douglas, all a part of the East Precinct Youth Advisory Council, created a traffic enforcement mission at the campus in cooperation with the Portland Police Department east precinct.

Academics

In 2008, 67% of the school's seniors received a high school diploma. Of 748 students, 500 graduated, 141 dropped out, 19 received a modified diploma, and 88 were still in high school the following year.

In 1991, the school district introduced the Project STARS (Students Taking Authentic Routes to Success) "school-to-work" program after a survey concluded that, of the recent graduates of the school, 20% went on to four-year colleges. Anthony Palermini, the superintendent, said, "We were doing an excellent job of providing a well-rounded college prep education. But it wasn't relevant to 25 to 30 percent of our students." The program introduced students to various career fields.

Editorial summary

“David Douglas High School” enters the record as high school in Oregon, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what David, Douglas and High can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1954, 1998, 2009, 2008—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1954. Its strongest next move is a source search built around David, Douglas and High.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“David Douglas High School” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, David, Douglas and High provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5233051. Authority coordinates are 45.516, -122.527. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954, 1998, 2009 and 2008.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “David Douglas High School”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow David Douglas High School primary sources, David Douglas High School archive and David research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “David Douglas High School”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “David Douglas High School” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.