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Do Now
More than one out of five high school students in California drop out of school. Answer one or more of these questions: What do you think is the biggest reason why so many students don't make it to graduation? Do you know of someone who dropped out? What do you think was the cause?
Introduction
More than 20 percent of California high school students drop out of school before graduation, according to 2009 state education data. That's a lot of students! To get a sense of just how many, imagine sitting in your math class and counting out every fifth student sitting in class with you. In a class of 30, that would be six students.
Of course, 20 percent is just the average dropout rate in California. Some schools have a much lower rate, but for others, it's much, much higher. And in many cases, it's low-income areas with large minority student populations that have some of the highest dropout rates.
For instance, in 2009 more than one third of California's African American public high school students didn't graduate. That's far above the rate for any other ethnic group. Hispanics had the second highest rate, at 27 percent, according to the state's data.
The dropout rate differences between school districts also varied greatly. In Oakland, for instance, the dropout rate in 2009 was 40 percent, one of the highest in the state (up from 28 percent the previous year). But directly across the bridge in San Francisco, the rate was only 9 percent (down from 18 percent in 2008).
