BETTER TRACKING: The head of California's Department of Education announced a nearly 1-in-4 dropout rate for the state's high school students. Ethnic minority students are much more likely to dropout than their Caucasian cohorts.

The State of California's Department of Education (CDE) implemented a new system for tracking high school students in 2006. Wednesday the state released the first report using the new data. The report shows that 24.2% of California's high school students drop out before graduation—nearly twice the estimate from earlier years.

California Drop-out Rate Especially High for Ethnic Minorities

California's new tracking system assigns an identification number to each student in grades 9-12, and then follows them throughout their high school careers.

Statewide, nearly one in four students dropped out over a four-year period. Here's the first set of student data, covering the academic year 2006-2007:

The report shows that racial minorities dropped out at much higher rates than whites:

"I was quite shocked at how many students are falling through the cracks," said California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell. "This is a crisis." (San Francisco Chronicle, 7/17/08)

Drop-out Report Uses New System for Tracking Students

California's new student tracking system allows the state to follow the movements of students who had been difficult to keep track of before. Examples include students who...

• transferred to new public schools outside of their original school district
• left public school for private school
• failed to show up at the beginning of the school year
• left public school for home schooling
• enrolled in a school outside of California

While the new system provides a much more complete set of data than earlier methods for measuring dropouts, the data is incomplete. This first report uses only the 2006-2007 academic year to extrapolate numbers for all four grades covered in the report.

In addition, the system cannot account for districts and counties where there are large numbers of charter schools or other alternative schools. Though these schools report into the state's tracking system, they may not follow the same academic guidelines as public schools, skewing the results.

The system will continue to collect data, and a more complete set of information will be available at the completion of the 2009-2010 academic year.

Why is California's Drop-out Rate So High?

At a press conference Wednesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said, "What is the reason for the dropouts? Is it parenting, a lack of parenting? Is it that we don't have enough after-school programs to help the kids with their homework and with schoolwork? Is it that the teaching that is going on is too boring?" (San Jose Mercury News, 7/17/08)

The new data cannot yet answer these questions, though it will over time since it collects student reasons for dropping out. The CDE continues to work to synchronize old procedures with the new tracking system.

While the state waits for data, the subject of high school dropouts continues to be extensively studied.

Education Prof. Russell Rumberger of the University of California in Santa Barbara directs the California Dropout Research Project. Rumberger's group suggests three contributing factors for California's increase in dropouts over the last five years:

1. a large increase in Latino students, who are among the most likely to drop out;
2. California's increased academic standards; and
3. inadequate funding for education.

The group also points to family background as "the most powerful predictor of student achievement." (California Dropout Research Project [PDF]) The California Dropout Research Project found the following factors increased a high school student's likelihood of dropping out:

• low-income households
• less-educated parents
• not living with both parents

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