State audit finds that 23% of Latino students dropped out of school

For Immediate Release: March 16, 2012
For More Information Contact: Carol Chamberlain – office: (916) 319-2069, mobile: (916) 804-5355

Comprehensive California High School Drop Out Audit Findings Now Available

Audit, Conducted at Request of Latino Legislative Caucus, Shows Nearly 95,000 Students of the Class of 2010 Dropped Out.  Approximately 50,000 of Those Students Were Latinos.

SACRAMENTO – At the request of the California Latino Legislative Caucus, the California State Auditor conducted extensive research into the new reporting of high school graduation and dropout data by the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS). The report, High School Graduation and Dropout Data: California’s New Database May Enable the State to Better Serve Its High School Students Who Are at Risk of Dropping Out, was released yesterday.

“Finally, we have a comprehensive report verifying exactly where we stand in terms of graduation rates and dropout rates,” said State Assemblyman Jose Solorio, who took a lead role in writing the audit request. “The numbers aren’t shocking to those who follow the trends, but understanding the breakdown of the numbers by such factors as ethnicity, socioeconomic status and command of the English language is very valuable in having a baseline to measure future improvement.

We also found that up to 33 percent of data regarding why students leave high school early is inaccurate or undocumented. That’s a red flag that’s been raised and now the California Department of Education is planning to work with schools on ensuring they’re following the proper reporting guidelines.”

State Assemblyman Ricardo Lara, chair of the Latino Legislative Caucus, concurred. “We are eliminating guess work and are on the way to tracking every student over time. These audit findings provide policymakers with a better snapshot of the dropout crisis so we can do a better job of identifying at risk students early on and intervene for better results.”

The 2009-10 graduation class is the first class to be tracked throughout their entire high school experience. According to the report, the State’s graduation rate for the 2009-10 cohort of students was 74.4 percent, while the dropout rate was 18.2 percent. African-American students and Hispanic or Latino students dropped out at higher rates than their peers, as did students who were English language learners. White and Asian socioeconomically disadvantaged students were more likely to drop out than students in those groups who were not socioeconomically disadvantaged. And students who failed the California High School Exit Examination on their first attempt, were significantly less likely to graduate than students who passed on their first attempt.

The report did however point out that CALPADS implementation was uneven throughout the state. The way personnel verified and documented codes varied depending upon the reasons that students left school, so the data on some students may be less accurate than for others. The report also concluded that another 7.4 percent of the students in this class could not be accounted for as either dropouts or graduates for unknown reasons.

“We are only beginning to realize the power of CALPADS and what the data will ultimately be able to tell us,” said Solorio. “But today we know 94,312 students of the class of 2010 dropped out, and because of this report, we have a clearer sense of the demographics of those students. That is a major step forward.”

To review the fact sheet of the report, follow this link, for the brief Summary, this link, or this link for the entire report.

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State Assemblyman Jose Solorio is the Chair of the Assembly Insurance Committee and also serves on the Assembly Appropriations and Transportation committees. He represents the Sixty-Ninth Assembly District, which includes the cities of Anaheim, Garden Grove, and Santa Ana. For more information about Assemblyman Solorio, visit www.assembly.ca.gov/solorio.

Art Pedroza Editor

Our Editor, Art Pedroza, worked at the O.C. Register and the OC Weekly and studied journalism at CSUF and UCI. He has lived in Santa Ana for over 30 years and has served on several city and county commissions. When he is not writing or editing Pedroza specializes in risk control and occupational safety. He also teaches part time at Cerritos College and CSUF. Pedroza has an MBA from Keller University.

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