On the news last night, LA has a dropout rate of 50%, but hey....go ahead and skip school to run through the streets and protest against a country that allows you to sit in that school for a chance to learn........hmmmmm somethings a muk over there eh?


http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.e ... pout05.php


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.