Report blasts state over dropouts Graduation rates inflated, study finds

SF Gate ^ | 3/24/05 | Nanette Asimov

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

In a searing indictment of California's school system, Harvard University researchers say the state graduates only 71 percent of its high school students -- not the 87 percent it claims.

...The Harvard study found that some California schools are simply "dropout factories" and that dropout estimates for nonwhite students are worst of all: Just 50.2 percent of black ninth-grade boys received a diploma four years later.

...-- Black and Latino students are three times more likely than white students to attend a "dropout factory," a school with graduation rates of 60 percent or less.

-- Only 10 percent of black students and 7 percent of Latinos attend schools that graduate 90 percent of students.

-- Schools with healthy graduation rates usually have few students from poor families: At 80 percent of such schools, fewer than 1 in 5 students is low-income...

[Wally_Kalbacken]

"California is doing a miserable job of addressing the graduation rate crisis," said Daniel Losen, a senior researcher with the Civil Rights Project.

Correction: Black and Latino cultures are doing a miserable job of communicating the value of education and a respect for learning to their children.