High school dropout rate climbs to 34.9%

The high school dropout rate improved slightly in California last year but rose in Los Angeles, where more than one-third of students are officially classified as dropouts, state officials said Tuesday.

Statewide, 68.3% of students graduated and 20.1% dropped out, according to data released by the state Department of Education. For the Los Angeles Unified School District, the dropout rate was 34.9%. Although the state dropout rate was down 1 percentage point from the previous year, the Los Angeles Unified rate was up by more than 3 percentage points.

The dropout rate is an estimate of how many students began ninth grade four years earlier and failed to graduate last spring. The dropout rate and graduation rate do not add up to 100% because they don't count students who get high school equivalency degrees, are still in school after four years or die.

Critics of the way the state calculates the dropout rate say it significantly understates the problem by, among other things, not counting students who transfer to private schools and then drop out. It also excludes the students -- more than 10,000 in California last year -- who drop out of middle school. State officials said they would begin including middle school students in the dropout rate next year.

Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell said that although he was encouraged by the slight progress statewide, the dropout rate remained "unacceptably high" and was "alarmingly high" among African American and Latino students.

-- Mitchell Landsberg 

Comments

[Areli R.]

I feel obligated to blog on this article because this article is speaking of me: my ethnicity and where I go to school. I am a Mexican American or as this article calls me, "Latina," and I go to school in the suburbs of LA which means, this article is including the drop-out students from my school. I will admit that now I do not see the same people I saw my first year of high school. However, I believe that our teachers have done everything possible to allow these students to graduate on time from high school. Our school offers a after school, summer school, and you can even aggregate a 7th period to your schedule. I wrote an article for my high school paper about two months ago about teachers having the fault for the students not succeeding after high school but honestly, from my prospective, where the student ends up at the end of their high school career was decided before that student was even born. Who that student's parent are and what economic situation he's in and what kind of environment he's born into will have a long lasting affect on the student. So instead of going through piles of paper work putting numbers out for the public to see how many students are not graduating (which most miss information on), we should be helping those who need assistance so that they do graduate. Which benefits us more???

[Andrew]

The free day care centers for the children of illegal aliens
calling itself LAUSD, the lowest rated in the USA, have had this drop out rate for so long it has become endemic!
How could they NOW be Alarmed?

[m]

Alarmingly high among black and hispanics?

The school district can only do so much with the dropout problems being a cultural issue. The black and hispanic cultures do not emphasize education. School is seen as a burden and not seen as "cool".

Let those who are not willing to sit still in a classroom until they are 18 pay the consequences.

[Louweegie272]

How can we have the highest paid teachers in the country and continue to have these dropout rates grow every year? We once had the best schools in the country, what happened?

[Chuck Wavy Dean]

More of the same old, same old: high drop out rates for Blacks and Hispanics. This statistic has been the case for years and years and I frankly don't see it getting better in the future. In fact, it will probably get worse. It is time to quit blaming LAUSD and look to the source of the problem: the cultural and family background that these dropouts come from. If their families (specifically their parents if one or both are still around) and community don't stress education then these kids are very unlikely to succeed in school. It's too bad that these kids don't realize that by dropping out they are dooming themselves to a life of economic struggle. They also are likely to continue the problem with their kids down the road.

[rob]

let's continue to blame the victims for societal problems, and hire dumb actors to run the state.

[Steven]

Well, the proof is in the pudding. These uneducated unemployable individuals are trying to tell AZ how to run their government. They are now trying to come in through the back door by filing suit with anyone that does not agree with their taking over America. What's Next -