New California dropout data will track individual students

The public today could start getting a better picture of how many California students are dropping out of school. For the first time in California, dropout rates will be measured based on the tracking of individual students across the entire state.

The goal is a more realistic count, which is expected to be worse than the numbers generated by the state's previous process for tabulation. Under the old formula, the state's four-year dropout rate for the class of 2006 was 13.9%. But that doesn't match up with raw attrition numbers for students from that class. There were 461,133 eighth-graders in the class of 2006, but only 349,207 graduates, a decline of 24.3%. Both numbers are considered flawed for various reasons.

Dropout rates have long been among the most distrusted statistics compiled by educators. For one thing, there is no system to audit the self-reported figures from schools. L.A. Unified has addressed this issue by generating lists of potential dropouts at the district level rather than at schools. But schools statewide frequently have broad latitude for classifying a student's departure as something other than dropping out.

Some of these problems will persist in the new system. If a school claims that a student left the state or country, the state will not check that claim. Other states face the same challenge because there is no universal student tracking. But if a school district claims a student transferred to a school in California, the new state system will now either verify or refute that claim. Each California student now will have a unique number.

By any measure, the students at the Hollywood Alternative Education and Work Center were potential, if not actual, dropouts. Yet on Thursday, a group of once unlikely graduates will receive diplomas, part of a local effort to stem the dropout tide.

Angel Yos, 18, couldn't handle the pressure of keeping up in school while also looking after his younger siblings and working long hours in the family business. Jasmin Alas, 17, stopped going to school after giving up drugs and alcohol, in part, because it was uncomfortable facing her old friends. Leslie Lopez, 19, got off track after becoming pregnant in the 11th grade.

These students rebounded in an independent study program, through which they met individually with a teacher as needed, but worked mostly at home. Their program, part of the Hollywood Community Adult School, operates out of a storefront on the second-floor of a Hollywood strip mall.

“There was a time I thought about giving up, but I didn’t,” said Lopez, who plans to attend community college and is interested in computer drafting.

On Tuesday, Lopez was drafting her graduation speech. “This day might be the last day of our high school years,” she began, writing in longhand, “but it is also one step closer to our successful and bright future.”

-- Howard Blume