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:<\/p>\n
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<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThere 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.<\/p>\n
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<\/a> throughout life. <\/p>\n
If you want to crunch your own numbers on our schools, check out the CA DoE’s DataQuest system<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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:<\/p>\n
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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***
\n
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<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThere 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.<\/p>\n
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<\/a> throughout life. <\/p>\n