California graduation rate tops 80 percent
National goals hinge on state improvement
Published: April 30, 2014
More California high school students than ever are graduating on time, the latest state figures show. Better than eight in 10 students who were freshmen in 2009-10 earned a regular diploma in 2013, the California Department of Education announced this week.
"For the first time in our state’s history, more than 80 percent of our students are graduating—a clear sign of their hard work and the support they receive from their teachers, families, and communities,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said.
It’s the fourth straight year of improved graduation rates since the state started calculating the information through its student data tracking system. Now that data on individual students can be obtained through the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System, or CALPADS, more accurate graduation and dropout rates are possible. The National Center on Education Statistics uses a similar method for calculating rates nationwide.
Looking at the data by ethnicity, however, achievement gaps persist. Just 67.9 percent of African-American students graduated with their class in 2013, although that number was up by 1.3 percent from the previous year. And 75.4 percent of Hispanic students graduated on time; up 1.7 percent from 2012.
Overall dropout rates for students statewide decreased by 1.5 percent, to 11.6 percent of the class. The dropout rate for African-Americans was down 2.2 percent, and down 2 percent for Hispanic students.
“The priorities of the Local Control Funding Formula have redoubled our efforts to identify best practices for improving student attendance and graduation,” said Teri Burns, Senior Director for Policy and Programs and herself a school board member in Natomas Unified School District near Sacramento.
It’s notable that another 8.2 percent of 2009-10 freshmen are not counted as either graduates or dropouts in the state's report, either because they received a high school equivalency diploma, are non-diploma special education students, or are still enrolled in school.
Graduation rates are likewise on the increase nationally, now at 80 percent according to the “2014 Building a GradNation” report from the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit America’s Promise Alliance, in conjunction with other public policy agencies. But a national goal of 90 percent on-time graduation hinges on California’s progress, particularly for young men of color, said the report.
“We are continuing toward our goal of graduating 100 percent of our students with the skills and knowledge they will need to succeed,” Torlakson said.
CSBA has long been concerned with dropout rates in the state, particularly since the Harvard Civil Rights Project brought attention to California’s dropout problem in 2005. Since then, CSBA has made the achievement gap and dropout prevention a matter of its policy work, and published magazine feature stories and fact sheets on the issue. See all of CSBA’s resources on the Student Achievement pages of csba.org.
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