Uncertain Data Suggest High School Graduation Still Rising

The rate at which California students graduate from high school went up slightly last year, continuing a five-year trend, according to information released by the state Thursday.

At least that’s what state officials think happened. Even as the state released its annual report, officials acknowledged they do not have reliable data on how many students actually finished high school or dropped out.

According to one set of numbers, 32% of the students who enrolled in ninth grade four years ago failed to receive diplomas last spring. According to another set, only 11% dropped out.

It’s impossible to reconcile the two numbers because the state has no way of knowing, for example, how many students repeated grades, left the state, earned high school equivalency certificates, completed adult school or transferred to private schools.

For all those reasons, the state doesn’t attempt to figure out graduation rates for individual schools or districts. It does, however, report dropout rates for schools and districts to comply with federal law even as officials acknowledge they can’t vouch for their accuracy.

Whatever the exact figures, far too many students are failing to graduate at a time when all but the most menial jobs require at least a high school diploma. When the class of 1999 entered ninth grade, it numbered 437,974; four years later, only 299,221 were handed diplomas.

“More than ever before, our young people need to understand that if they do not have a diploma, their prospects for the future are greatly diminished,” said state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin.

Attendance and graduation data are supposed to be factored into schools’ Academic Performance Index, a new state measure of school quality. A low API ranking can lead, ultimately, to a school’s being taken over by the state. But officials do not consider the available data to be accurate enough to be used for such high-stakes purposes.

“Even though we released this information today . . . it is not considered as reliable as it needs to be to be used in the accountability system,” said Doug Stone, the education department spokesman.

He said the apparent discrepancy between dropout figures and completion rates highlights the need for the state to develop a computerized system to track individual students. That way it would be possible to know whether a student re-enrolled somewhere else. It also would be possible to calculate the percentage of a group of ninth-graders that managed to matriculate four years later at a California school.

But such a system would cost $50 million to $60 million to create and is at least five years away from completion.

The confusion in the data is best seen by comparing the state’s graduation rate with the state dropout rate over time.

The graduation rate is a simple comparison of the number of ninth- graders with the number of graduates four years later. By that measure, the state’s graduation rate has been virtually unchanged for 20 years, hovering just above 66%.

The dropout rate, on the other hand, is calculated from information that is provided by school districts about the number of students who stopped showing up. When first reported a decade ago, the dropout rate was 20%, meaning that one of every five ninth-graders was thought to have quit school.

That created pressure from public and state officials to lower the dropout rate. School districts scrambled to create independent study and other programs for students who found the traditional high school too constraining. Principals also strived to track down students who had re-enrolled elsewhere.

Since then, the dropout rate has fallen by nearly half. But it continues to fluctuate in individual districts.

The dropout rate in the Los Angeles Unified School District rose from 18.6% to 21.8% last year; the rate for the Long Beach Unified School District fell for the third straight year, to 13.9%.

For the second straight year, the dropout rate in the Lynwood Unified School District was the worst in Los Angeles County, at 24.9%

The Compton Unified School District, which is under state control, reported its dropout rate had fallen from 18.8% to 7.6%., representing one of the steepest declines.

Complete dropout data can be viewed on the Internet at www.cde.ca.gov/demographics. Then click on Demographic Reports.

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Missing Students

The state released statistics that attempt to show how many students are finishing high school. Both sets of numbers are flawed, resulting in a discrepancy between the percentage of students who fail to get a diploma and the percentage of dropouts.

Source: California Department of Education