Facing Truth on Dropouts

California’s shockingly poor high school graduation rate is a nationwide embarrassment. Almost one in three ninth-graders does not graduate with his or her class, among the nation’s worst rates. And that damning number might grow as students soon face tougher academic requirements.

The magnitude of failure was concealed by state reports of steady declines in the dropout rates, based on complex and easily manipulated statistical methods used by local school districts and the state Department of Education. By that convoluted calculation, nearly 90% of ninth-graders would be graduating. The actual rate is a dismal 67.2% when measured simply by how many ninth-graders eventually get a diploma or the equivalent. It’s even worse in Los Angeles schools, with nearly half of ninth-graders failing to gain diplomas.

Accurate information, no matter how bad, is better than delusion. Reform is impossible without it. Now, a reversal must take root in homes and schools to nourish children intellectually from infancy through graduation.

California is already taking steps to improve public education. Better teachers, smaller classes, improved textbooks, standardized testing, summer school, remedial attention and more computers are already in place. Legislation passed this session will create summer reading academies for primary students who read below grade level, special programs to help teachers do a better job, accountability measures that hold students and educators more responsible for results and a high school exit exam beginning in 2004. These reforms are all needed but should be viewed as part of a web of support and improvement. Raising the bar won’t help if a growing number of students cannot meet the higher standard.

High school for most youngsters is a difficult time, rife with academic challenges, alienation, peer group pressures, family problems and even trouble with the law. Transiency, for many California students, is another barrier to graduation.

The Santa Ana Unified School District in Orange County tracks every student who enters high school, determining who has dropped out, moved, transferred or even died. This tracking enables educators to reach out to students who miss school frequently, often a prelude to dropping out. Other urban districts would do well to keep such detailed information so they could spot and help students at risk.

A high school diploma makes a difference. While dropouts can expect to make on average only $15,000 annually, high school graduates will earn a median income of $25,940, according to U.S. Census figures.

California ranks fourth from last in the United States in the percentage of state residents 18 to 24 years old who hold high school diplomas or the equivalent, and while those numbers include immigrants who came to this country as adults, they also include an unacceptably high total of adults who started school in this state and never finished. Now we know the truth and can begin climbing out of the hole.