Prior to the past school year California had no way to track every K-12 student and so was unable to accurately report the dropout rate. The reason being that a student transferring districts looks the same to the state as a student dropping out and an entirely new student entering another district. With a new way to track each student California can now report that the dropout rate for 2010 was 18.2%. As early as 8th grade the dropout rate is 3.5%. That means that upwards of 17,000 8th graders don’t make it to the 9th grade. But the dropout rates vary widely based on several factors. When looking at the rates based on reported race the disparity is easy to see.
| CA Statewide Graduation and Dropout Rates by Ethnicity | ||
| Graduation Rate | Dropout Rate | |
| Hispanic | 68% | 23% |
| Asian | 89% | 8% |
| Pacific Islander | 73% | 21% |
| Filipino | 88% | 8% |
| African American | 59% | 30% |
| White | 83% | 18% |
Race is one way to breakdown the dropout rates but it does not tell the whole story. The San Jose Mercury News broke down the numbers by school district in Santa Clara County which can be correlated with other factors. For those unfamiliar, Santa Clara County is essentially the Silicon Valley and is home to companies like Intel, Google, Cisco, Facebook, AMD, Applied Materials, Apple, Adobe, Nvidia, Yahoo and eBay just to name a few. Stanford University is located in Palo Alto. The point being that there are plenty of jobs and companies that like to talk about their devotion to education.
| Dropout Rates in Santa Clara County | ||
| Dropout Rate | ||
| Los Gatos – Saratoga | 1.70% | |
| Palo Alto | 2.10% | |
| Mountain View – Los Altos | 4.40% | |
| Fremont | 6.10% | |
| Milpitas | 8.20% | |
| Santa Clara (City) | 9.80% | |
| San Jose | 11.40% | |
| Morgan Hill | 12% | |
| Campbell | 12.90% | |
| Gilroy | 15.20% | |
| San Jose East Side | 18% | |
Despite being a relatively affluent area there are still districts with abysmal dropout rates, though nowhere near Oakland Unified’s 36% dropout rate.
Without digging up the income level in each of these school districts, anyone familiar with the area can tell that the list goes more or less from wealthiest to poorest. Though just being in a wealthy area does not mean that a district has a higher per student spend. But what is clear is that when all schools are faced with budget shortfalls the districts in wealthier areas respond differently. For example, when the Cupertino Union School District was millions of dollars short, parents in the district raised $1.6M on their own to fund the salaries of 110 teachers. This kind of fund raising is much harder to do in less wealthy districts. Since this district does not have a high school it is not included in the list above.
Though, with only one year of data it cannot be concluded that spending more reduces the dropout rate or where spending changes reduces the rate. California ranks 27th nationally in per student spending so there are many states that spend less.
What is known is that parental involvement has a direct impact on student achievement. Though parental involvement is a hard thing to measure. While all parents want their children to succeed there are many factors that parents have to deal with that can interfere with their ability or willingness to be involved.
Much of what is seen in the numbers is not going to shock anyone but prior to this the data was only estimated (and done so poorly). Having concrete data is the first step to being able to measure and improve the dropout rates. Then all that has to be done is make sure that a graduate has actually been provided with a useful curriculum that will allow them to enter college or obtain employment.
Source: SF Chronicle, LA Times, Mercury News
