State issues report on high school drop out rates
“The statewide numbers were stunning; the figures for Los Angeles were tragic.”
LA Times columnist Tim Rutten was shocked at the complacent response to the news last week of the utter failure of the public school system in California. Here are the latest numbers released by the California Department of Education: One in every four students statewide fails to finish high school. In the Los Angeles area, one in every three students drops out.
The drop out rate in LAUSD varies with students’ race and ethnicity: 40% of African Americans, 35.4% of Latinos, 20.1% of whites, and 13.4% of Asians will drop out before completing high school.
According to Rutten, LAUSD has never come up with reliable numbers to show what percentage of its students actually graduate. It took pressure from civil rights groups and advocates for school vouchers to finally force the state into passing legislation that tracks individual students’ progress through schools.
But even these high numbers were disputed by Mayor Villaraigosa who claimed the actual numbers are higher. Even with the lower estimates the actual numbers are daunting: Every year nearly 120,000 more students drop out of school before graduating. The social costs in terms of less income, more unemployment, more crime, and less taxes paid to the state are staggering, one estimate is at $46 billion dollars.
The actual rate of drop outs in the Los Angeles area high schools, according to Rutten, are much higher: Jefferson (58%), Belmont (56%), Locke (50.9%), Crenshaw (50%), Roosevelt (49.6%), Fremont (46%) and Jordan (43.7%). The students who drop out shouldn’t be the only ones considered failures.
Mayor Villaraigosa, who has attempted to take control of some schools, disputed the state figures. He said the figures did not take into account students who drop out before ninth grade, making these figures closer to 60 or 70 percent.
Despite the gloomy outcome, the report is being hailed for finally attempting to reliably measure dropout rates. The new tracking system is being accepted by both education officials and education experts.
Villaraigosa took over control of ten of the worst-performing schools in the LAUSD earlier this month.
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