Good news: Graduation rates trending up
Hispanic, black and ELLs improving fastest
Published: July 10, 2012
The percentage of students graduating from high school is up in California—with black and Hispanic students and English learners making the largest gains.
More than three quarters, or 76.3 percent, of 2007 freshmen graduated on time in 2011—up 1.5 percentage points from the 2010 graduation rate. Hispanic and black students climbed 2.2 and 2.3 percentage points respectively, and English learners made the biggest increase, at 3.8 percentage points. The graduation rate for socioeconomically disadvantaged students climbed nearly 2 percentage points, from 68.1 to 70 percent. Successful academic recovery programs push the actual graduation rate even higher when students who take more than four years to earn their diploma are factored in.
First year-to-year comparison of graduation rates
The state’s fully functioning California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System, or CALPADS, makes more accurate graduation and dropout rates possible. This is the second time this four-year cohort information was collected, making year–to-year comparisons possible for the first time. Cohort rates will now be used to determine whether schools have met their federal accountability targets for increasing the graduation rate. The data does not reflect the academic year just concluded.
The student-based data, however, also confirm that significant numbers of students drop out of school during the middle school years.
“Our research shows that chronic absence from school, even as early as kindergarten, is a strong indicator of whether a child will drop out of school later,” state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said. “The dropout rate shows there’s still much work to be done, particularly to address the needs of disadvantaged and minority students. We must build on our work with parents and communities in the earliest years to pave the way for kids to succeed in school.”
See graduation and dropout rates for your school district or county, as well as state statistics, at the Department of Education DataQuest website.