Sacramento, CA, June 28, 2012, 8:00am – Graduation rates among California’s public school students are climbing and dropout rates are falling, with the big gains being made among the state’s largest minority groups. More than three quarters, or 76.3% of students who started high school in 2007 graduated with their class in 2011. That is up 1.5 percentage points from the 2010 graduation rate. Large gains were seen among Hispanic and African American students at 2.2 and 2.3 percentage points respectively. The graduation rate for socio-economically disadvantaged students climbed nearly 2 percentage points, from 68.1 to 70 percent. Beyond the 76.3 percent graduation rate and the 14.4 percent dropout rate, the remaining 9.3 percent are students who did not graduate or drop out. Graduation and dropout rates for counties, districts, and schools across California were calculated with two years of data, and now the rates will be used to determine whether schools have met their targets for increasing the graduation rate for the Adequate Yearly Progress reporting under the federal school accountability system.
