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Student dropout rate hits 20%
Superintendent bemoans 'tremendous loss of potential'
By Bruce Lieberman
STAFF WRITER
San Diego Union Tribune
July 17, 2008
More than 1 in 5 public school students in the county will drop out of school by their senior year, new data from the state Department of Education show.
San Diego County fared slightly better than the state, which posted a four-year dropout estimate of 24.2 percent – nearly 1 in 4 students.
The statistics, released yesterday, on the four-year dropout rates are estimates of the percentages of students who would drop out in a four-year period – based on data collected in the 2006-07 school year.
They painted a grim picture of a crisis that educators say exacts an enormous cost on society.
“It represents a tremendous loss of potential,” said Jack O'Connell, state superintendent of public instruction.
In the 2006-07 school year, 127,292 students in the state between grades nine and 12 dropped out, the reports says. The total enrollment for those grades was 1,997,181.
The release of dropout data signaled a new era in tracking the progress of the state's public school students. Since June 2005, every student in California has been assigned an identification number that eventually will allow educators to profile academic progress from preschool through high school.
“For years, people have guessed about the real dropout rate, and now we have the best information we have ever had,” said state Sen. Darrell Steinberg, a Sacramento Democrat who has chaired a legislative committee on the dropout problem.
California's dropout rate has real consequences that reverberate throughout society, according to “Solving California's Dropout Crisis,” a report released in February by the California Dropout Research Project at UC Santa Barbara.
The state suffers $46.4 billion in total economic losses for every group of 120,000 20-year-olds who never complete high school, the report found.
More than two-thirds of all high school dropouts will use food stamps during their work lives, and the probability of incarceration for a black male dropout is 60 percent, the report also stated.
The new statistics are particularly alarming among California's Latino and black students. An estimated 30.3 percent of Latino students and 41.6 percent of black students drop out between ninth and 12th grade, compared with 15.2 percent of white students.
Across San Diego County, 28.8 percent of Latino students drop out during high school, compared with 41.7 percent of black students and 13.6 percent of white students.
Students across the county have benefited from specialized programs designed to help them graduate.
Ramiro Ruiz, 18, of Oceanside is attending an Academic Recovery Center in the Oceanside Unified School District to complete the last few dozen credits he needs to graduate. After years of ditching school, a persistent drinking problem and run-ins with police, he said he wants to earn his diploma this fall and move on to Palomar College to become an electrician. He would be the first among four brothers and two sisters to graduate from high school.
“I know I've messed up a lot, but I have to get my stuff together,” Ruiz said.
In the San Diego Unified District, the county's largest school district, an estimated 30.5 percent of Latino students and 28.7 percent of black students drop out during high school. That's compared with 15.3 percent of white students.
“It's embarrassing, and it's disappointing,” said San Diego Unified Superintendent Terry Grier, who was hired this year. “We are not going to have a school district that has these kinds of dropout numbers.”
Educators in Vista and Julian said their high estimated number of dropouts were skewed either by charter schools in their districts, which operate independent of many education laws, or by dropout rates at alternative high schools, where students already at risk of dropping out are assigned.
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