San Gabriel Valley Tribune (California), April 21, 2007
Public high schools must answer the cry for accountability from parents and the community. However, when the most basic benchmark - graduation rates - is constantly under question, it makes accountability impossible.
Now, a program to track students from freshman to senior years and accurately measure graduation and dropout rates has been proposed, along with adequate funding.
On Wednesday, by a 10-0 vote, the Assembly Committee on Education approved the plan, authored by Assembly members Mike Feuer, D-West Hollywood and Mark DeSaulnier, D-Martinez, to fully fund a data system that each district with public and charter high schools must participate in.
The California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) will track students entering and all the way through high school, no matter where they end up. No more guessing as to whether they've left for another school, another state, or simply dropped out without getting a diploma.
The system will be a long overdue fix to the problem of unreliable graduation and dropout rates. While districts report low dropout rates of 2 percent to 4 percent, the numbers can actually be upward of 20 percent to 40 percent or higher for certain cohorts, because the districts do not base their dropout rates on four years of data but rather, on one year of data.
A recent study out of Harvard found California's average high school graduation rate was around 71 percent (conversely, a 29 percent dropout rate), a lot lower than the officially reported 87 percent figure. The Harvard study of large California districts found Latinos were graduating at a rate of 60 percent, and African Americans, 56.6 percent.
Getting accurate figures from school districts has been a statewide problem. Districts don't have an accurate method of tracking graduates and the state Department of Education doesn't verify the statistical methods.
According to the Pacific Research Institute, which has studied this issue for 20 years, statistical loopholes make for unreliable numbers. "Students who drop out of school during summer vacation and fail to enroll in the fall are not counted as dropouts ... and schools could also eliminate a dropout from their records by transferring a student's records to an independent study program without verifying what had actually happened," it reported. We suspect the dropout rates for local districts, especially those with a high percentage of low-income and/or minority students, are much higher than reported.
Not knowing the rate of graduation is unacceptable. It is like if Toyota didn't know how many Corollas come off its assembly lines each year. Making graduates is what K-12 districts (or unified districts) do. To not know how many actually graduate is operating blindly.
That's why most districts, and the California Association of School Business Officials, support the bill, as does our own expert, state Sen. Jack Scott, D-Pasadena, who heads the Senate Committee on Education, and California schools chief Jack O'Connell.
It would provide $5 per pupil funding - a total of about $32 million - for districts to count, track and input the data in a timely fashion.
The exact amount of funding undoubtedly will be debated in the bill's next step, the Assembly Appropriations Committee and by budget negotiators. We don't know if it is too little or too much. A program mandated on school districts must come with adequate funding - that is a must. As is a reliable system for schools and communities to know how many students are successful - or not.
