Grossmont, Helix Saw About 2 Percent of Students Quit in 2010, State Says

School began Aug. 10 at Helix Charter High School and starts Sept. 6 at Grossmont High. Educators will have many goals, but one that counts especially high: improve graduation rates and lower the number of dropouts.

Only 1.7 percent of Helix students dropped out in 2010, just ahead of the 2.1 percent at Grossmont across town, state figures show.

Both schools’ dropout rates were less than half the state average in 2010, according to recently released data from the California Department of Education.

Graduation rates for 2010, the latest year available, also were released. They showed Helix at 82.5 percent and Grossmont at 83.3 percent, compared with a 74.4 percent state average and San Diego County’s 73.8 percent projected four-year graduation rate.

The Grossmont Union High School District overall graduation average was 78.7 percent.

In 2010, Grossmont High School’s four-year projected dropout rate was 5.1 percent.  Some 56 students left the school before graduating, 46 percent of them in their senior year, data show.

African-American, Filipino and Hispanic students had the highest dropout rate at Grossmont High.

At Helix, 39 students dropped out of school before graduating—12 of them in their senior year. The four-year projected dropout rate was 6.7 percent.

At Helix, Amercian Indian/Alaska Native, Filipinos, African American and Pacific Islander students had the highest dropout rates.

The four-year projected rate is an estimate of the percent of students who would drop out in a four-year period based on data collected for a single year, according to the department's database.

The state four-year projected rate was 18 percent.

Statewide, 4.6 percent of high school students leave school early, according to the state.

In the Special Education program in the Grossmont Union High School District, 8.5 percent dropped out, compared with 11.2 percent in 2009.

Across the school district, 610 students (11.5 percent), dropped out before graduating. Ethnic data show that 297 white students and 195 African-American students dropped out.

The state used a different formula to calculate graduation and dropout rates this year, according to a press release, so comparing this year’s data with previous years isn’t possible.

Poway Unified had the highest graduation rate in the county at 95 percent, followed by Carlsbad Unified at 92.4 percent, Coronado Unified at 92.7 percent, San Dieguito Union at 94.4 percent and Valley Center-Pauma Unified at 90.6 percent.

Under new reporting methods, the San Diego Unified School District, the largest in the region, had a 74.9 percent graduation rate.

 The state said:

The graduation and dropout rates continue to show a significant achievement gap between students who are Hispanic, African American, or English learners and their peers. The 74.4 percent statewide graduation rate and 18.2 percent statewide dropout rate—as well as rates calculated for counties, districts, and schools across California—were for the first time based on four-year cohort information collected about individual students using the state's California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System.

 State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said: “For far too long, the discussion about graduation and dropout rates has revolved around how the results were obtained. Now, we can focus on the much more important issue of how to raise the number of graduates and lower the number of dropouts.”

The new cohort graduation rate will now serve as a baseline in 2011, the state said.

In 2012, it will also replace the previous formula to determine graduation rates as required by U.S. law.

The previous formula—called the National Center for Education Statistics completer rate—is used to determine whether schools have met their targets for increasing the graduation rate for Adequate Yearly Progress reporting under the federal accountability system.

The NCES completer rate was needed until California had four years of longitudinal student data to calculate a cohort rate.

See the Sacramento Bee database for an easy look at dropout rates statewide and by counties and schools.