State’s Graduation Rate Is Among Worst in U.S.

Figures released Monday show that California’s high school graduation rate is among the lowest in the nation, belying years of glowing reports purporting to show steady declines in the dropout rate.

Bowing to critics of the methods it uses to track dropouts, the state Department of Education this year also reported that, for the 1998 graduating class, nearly a third of the students who entered ninth grade failed to earn high school diplomas. That rate was about three times the number reported as the dropout rate. In the past, the state has reported only the dropout rate, not the graduation rate.

This year, state officials refused to release graduation rates for individual school districts and schools, saying that they could be distorted by student transfers. Instead, they are continuing to provide figures that purport to show that all districts in the state have better dropout rates than the state as a whole.

In Los Angeles Unified, for example, the 1997-98 dropout rate reported Monday was 18.6%--down from 26.2% the previous year. But the graduation rate--not reported by the state but derived from state data--was 46%, meaning fewer than half the entering ninth-graders received a diploma.

Statewide, not only was the 1998 graduation rate a disappointing 67.2%, but that actually represented a slight decline over the last 10 years, even as state officials were claiming steady reductions in dropouts.

In a third set of numbers reported Monday, California ranked fourth from the bottom in the percentage of state residents ages 18 to 24 who have a high school diploma or its equivalent.

The U.S. Census Bureau figures indicated that California’s 81% tied with Texas and was ahead of only Nevada, Pennsylvania and Louisiana.

None of the existing methods for calculating the dropout rate is flawless, but the fact that the graduation rate and the census show a similar story strongly indicates that the state’s claim of steady improvement in the dropout rate is incorrect.

For years, the annual report of dropout rates provided one of the few bright spots in the state’s dismal education picture.

Last year, for example, state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin introduced the annual dropout report with an optimistic message.

“In the last decade, we can be proud of the gains we have made cutting the percentage of high school dropouts by more than half,” Eastin said.

Her comments this year were far more subdued, focusing on the need to reduce student transfers, often the first step toward dropping out.

“It is important to help our students form a connection with their schools and to move them to alternative settings only when all other options have failed,” Eastin said.

State officials said they have given up on soon developing a method to measure dropouts that is reliable enough to be used to hold schools accountable. Consequently, dropout rates will not be included in the index of school performance being developed as part of Gov. Gray Davis’ reform effort.

“We know we’ve got a problem in the state with not enough students graduating,” said Lynn Baugher, administrator of the department’s educational demographics office. “We also got a better appreciation that we don’t have enough data to describe it clearly, and certainly not enough to describe it from an accountability perspective.”

The state’s demographics are among the probable causes of its high dropout rate. More than 40% of the state’s students are Latino, a group that according to federal statistics has historically had a dropout rate, roughly three times higher than that of the general population.

Moreover, nearly half of California children are low-income, and almost 75% of students change schools at least once during their academic careers, which experts say also makes them more likely to drop out.

Lowering the state’s dropout rate has been a state goal since the mid-1980s. Although the rate at which students leave school without earning a diploma is widely acknowledged as a significant factor in judging a school’s performance, there have been escalating disagreements on how best to measure it.

The Department of Education has historically clung to the method that held the greatest potential for improvement: tracking ninth-graders individually to determine which ones leave over the four high school years.

By this measure, the state had a dismal dropout rate of more than 20% earlier in the decade. The four-year rate reported Monday for 1998 was down to 11.7%, suggesting that nearly 90% of all ninth-graders graduate.

Critics contend that this method grossly distorts the picture because it allows schools to wipe students off their books without knowing whether they actually graduate.

Districts ‘Cooking the Books,’ Critic Says

Any individual district could be correct in asserting that large numbers of its students have transferred elsewhere, but that cannot be true of all districts simultaneously.

Alan Bonsteel, a San Francisco doctor who mounted a campaign to report graduation rather than dropout rates, said large numbers of dropouts go uncounted because students first transfer, often to a county school or continuation school. He also alleges that students who leave school during the summer are not counted.

“It’s totally unaudited,” Bonsteel said. “It’s obvious that a lot of districts are totally cooking the books.”

In many cases, the way school districts have pursued the goal of fewer dropouts has been through better or, in some cases, more creative, record keeping.

The state defines a dropout as a student who stops coming to school and for whom the school does not receive a request for records and grades.

Some schools verify that students have enrolled in another school. But others wipe a dropout off their books by taking it upon themselves to transfer a student’s records to an independent study program.

Schools may also assert that a student who stops showing up has returned to Mexico or moved out of state, whether they have any evidence of that or not.

The state, in turn, does not have the resources to verify the reports it accumulates from schools and districts.

Bonsteel said he believes the dropout rate is so flawed that it should not be reported.

State education officials see corresponding problems with the graduation rate because it does not account for students who transfer, complete graduation requirements in adult school, or continue their studies in the armed forces.

“You don’t know how many of those ninth-graders are legitimately accountable to that school,” said Baugher of the state Department of Education.

After three months of deliberations last year, the State Board of Education decided to publish three measures of student attrition, adding census data to the information collected by schools.

But the census count isn’t immune to criticism. Doug Stone, a spokesman for the Department of Education, said that count does not consider immigrants who arrive in the state after high school age.

Conversely, Bonsteel said, census figures are likely to undercount dropouts because the poor are often missed in the national tally.

Better accounting for dropouts may be possible as the state assigns identification numbers to all public school students, making it possible to follow those who move from school to school. But that system is several years in the future, Stone said.

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Dueling Data

Newly released statewide data show no improvement in the percentage of students who do not graduate from high school. That contradicts claims by officials of an improving dropout rate.