The statistics highlight a problem that is getting worse in California, said Russell Rumberger, a professor of education at UC Santa Barbara who directs the California Dropout Research Project.
Even using the old system of measurement, he said, the number of dropouts has grown by 83% over five years while the number of high school graduates has gone up only 9%.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday, July 18, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 29 words Type of Material: Correction
Dropouts: An article in Thursday's Section A misstated the four-year dropout rate for Palisades Charter High School as 2.5%, which is a one-year rate. The four-year figure is 11.6%.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday, July 19, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 61 words Type of Material: Correction
Dropout rate: An article about California's high school dropout rate in Thursday's Section A misstated a remark by Russell Rumberger, a professor of education at UC Santa Barbara. Rumberger said one reason for an increase in the dropout rate is the growing population of Latinos and English learners. He did not say it was because of an increase in Latino immigrants.
"So that's sobering, it's really sobering," he said.
Rumberger attributed the trend to three primary factors: an increase in Latino immigrants, who are among the most likely to drop out; the raising of academic standards; and insufficient funding for public education.
For Los Angeles Unified, the new dropout rate was 33.6%. The rate was 25.3% under the old system in 2005-06.
Critics, including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, have said that as many as half of Los Angeles Unified students drop out. But a recent report by an independent research group, Policy Analysis for California Education, put the district's dropout rate at 25.7%.
O'Connell chose Birmingham High School in Van Nuys for his announcement, noting that it was the focus of a Times series on dropouts in 2006. He said he was particularly concerned by data showing a dropout rate of 41.6% for black students and 30.3% for Latino students, compared with 15.2% for whites and 10.2% for Asians.
"This is a crisis," he said.
In Los Angeles Unified, African American students dropped out at a lower rate than their counterparts statewide. That was not true of the other three groups.
Among large, comprehensive L.A. high schools, the highest dropout rates were recorded at Jefferson, 58%; Belmont, 56%; Locke, 50.9%; Crenshaw, 50%; and Roosevelt, 49.6%.
Those with the lowest rates were Palisades Charter High, 2.5%; Granada Hills Charter, 6.4%; Canoga Park, 11%; Cleveland, 12.8%; El Camino, 13%; Taft, 13.1%; Chatsworth, 14.5%; and Fairfax, 14.9%.
State officials acknowledge that even the latest figures are less than ideal. The four-year rate is based not on students' actual progress over four years but on one year's worth of data for all four grades. In the spring of 2011, data will be released based on students' actual journey over four years.
Moreover, it remains difficult to say why students left school because codes designed to explain that, listing choices such as "graduated," "died" and "no show," are based on a different time period than the dropout rate itself.
