Press Release

New Research Exposes Hidden High School Drop Out Crisis; Acute Among California’s African-American And Latino Students

Los Angeles, Oakland Districts Graduate Less than Half of Incoming Freshmen; Some Schools Beating the Odds and Graduating High Percentage of Low Income, African-American and Latino Students

Economic Implications and Solutions to Dropout Crisis to be Discussed at LA Conference: “Dropouts in California: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis”

Los Angles, CA--March 23, 2005 — A previously hidden crisis of high school dropouts in California was revealed today by researchers convening for The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University’s conference “Dropouts in California: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis.” The shocking new data reveal that high school graduation rates in California are much worse than reported by the state, and are alarmingly low for African-American and Latino students.

According to research to be presented at the March 24 conference, California’s overall graduation rate is approximately 71 percent––16 percentage points lower than the official rate of 87 percent. The graduation rates for African-American and Latino students are even lower, 60 percent for Latino students and 56.6 percent for African-Americans.

“Large urban school districts in California have become ‘dropout factories,’” said Gary Orfield, Director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University and author of the new book Dropouts In America: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis. The economic and social impacts of this dropout crisis are too enormous for Californians to ignore. The State must make schools accountable for graduating their students and provide resources to help students whose careers would be wrecked by leaving school.”

New research by the Urban Institute showed that California’s largest school districts have some of the worst on-time graduation rates. Specifically:

• Los Angeles and Oakland Unified School Districts graduate less than half of their incoming freshmen on time.
• Six of the state’s largest ten school districts graduate less than half of their Latino students: Los Angeles, San Diego, Fresno, Oakland, Sacramento City and San Bernardino City.

The state loses billions of dollars in revenue each year because high school dropouts are ill prepared to join the work force, leading to higher unemployment and underemployment rates. Professor Russell Rumberger of U.C. Santa Barbara calculated that just one year of high school dropouts costs the state $14 billion in lost wages.

Nevertheless, a new analysis by Professor Robert Balfanz at Johns Hopkins University shows that some schools are beating the odds and graduating a high percentage of their students. Balfanz found 15 schools with a high number of low income African-American and Latino students that are graduating more than 90 percent of their students. The top ten are: Polytechnic High – Long Beach, Calexico High-Calexico Unified, Alhambra High-Alhambra City High, Northview High-Covina Valley Unified, and Gabriella High—San Gabriel Unified, 32nd Street USC Performing Arts—LA Unified, Holtville High—Holtville Unified, Bassett Sr. High—Bassett Unified, Southwest Sr. High-Sweetwater Union High, Jordan High—Long Beach.

“California’s poor graduation rates can and must be improved,” said Anne Stanton, Director of the Youth Program at the James Irvine Foundation which provided funding for the conference. “Youth at risk of dropping out have enormous potential to be engaged, earn a diploma and become productive citizens.”

Solutions to be discussed at the conference include: funding and implementing the unique student identifier system that was passed by the California legislature, new legislation that would require more accurate statewide reporting and greater accountability for improving graduation rates, forming new coalitions to advocate for improvements at the district and state level, and implementing proven interventions designed to reduce California’s dropout rates. “If properly implemented, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) could be used to improve graduation rates,” said Daniel Losen, Senior Education Law and Policy Associate at The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. “The first step is to stop allowing states to report inaccurate graduation rates using flawed methodology. The second is to use NCLB to ensure that districts meet or make yearly progress towards a reasonable graduation rate goal for all students.”

Other research findings include:

• California actually graduated an estimated 71percent of its high school students in 2002. Estimated graduation rates for minority students for that year were substantially lower: 57 percent for African-Americans, 60 percent for Latinos, and 52 percent for Native Americans. In contrast, white students graduated at a rate of 78 percent.
• In California, African-American and Latino students are 3 times more likely than white students to attend a high school where graduation is not the norm (i.e. attrition of 40 percent or more). Overall 32 percent of African-American and 31 percent of Latino students in California attend one of these high schools compared to only 8 percent of white students.
• In the Los Angeles Unified School District—the state’s largest district—only 48 percent of African-American and Latino students who start 9th grade graduate four years later.
• Current educational policies, such as high stakes tests for students and test-driven accountability for schools, appear to create unintended incentives for school officials to push out low achieving students.
• The most accurate method for tracking high school graduation rates would be to provide each student with a single lifetime school identification number that would follow him/her throughout his/her entire school career.

CO-SPONSORS: The conference is co-sponsored by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, (CRP), the American Civil Liberties Union, (ACLU), Californians for Justice, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), Public Advocates, Inc., the University of California All Campus Consortium On Research for Diversity (UC/ACCORD), Justice Matters Institute, and Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE). It is supported by a grant from The James Irvine Foundation.

About The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University

The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University (CRP), founded in 1996, is a leading, national organization devoted to research and policy analysis about critical civil rights issues facing the nation. Its mission is to bridge the worlds of ideas and action by becoming a preeminent source of intellectual capital and a forum for building consensus within the civil rights movement. We achieve this by interweaving strategies of research and policy analysis, and by building strong collaborations between researchers, community organizations, lawyers and policy makers. Our dual objectives are to: (1) raise the visibility of, and attention to, racial justice national policy debates; and (2) arm local and national civil rights and educational organizations with credible research to inform their legal, political and public education efforts.

To view this report, visit:
http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/research/dropouts/dropouts05.php

Press Contacts:

Contacts: Simon Aronoff, Jessica Nusbaum, Fenton Communications, (415) 901-0111
Carlyn Foster, Fenton Communications, (202) 822-5200