California has about 6.3 million school age children. Unfortunately, 1 in 5 of them will drop out of high school, and the numbers for African-American and Latino students is even worse:

The grim news, based on a relatively new, statewide data system that tracks individual students throughout their education careers, shows that in 2007-2008 only 68.1 percent of students graduated from high school. 20.1 percent, or 1 in 5, dropped out.

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For black students, the dropout rate is 34.7 percent. Latinos, who make up nearly half of California’s public school students, have a dropout rate of 25.5 percent. Statewide, white students have a 12.2 percent dropout rate, while Asians have an 8.4 percent rate. (SJ Merc 5/12/09)

There are a class of students between those 68 and 20 percent figures that otherwise go on to get their high school diplomas, but nonetheless in a changing economy, it is troubling to see 20% of California’s students not even completing high school.

It can be argued that we should be focusing on improving vocational education programs in the schools to satisfy students that have no interest in further education, but without a high school diploma, workers get a substantially lower income throughout life.

If you want to crunch your own numbers on our schools, check out the CA DoE’s DataQuest system.