Gary Thomas, Ed.D. County Superintendent

Superintendent's Message

County Dropout Rate Continues To Decrease

While it's a positive development that our San Bernardino County dropout rate continues to decrease and bucks statewide trends, the reality is that too many of our students are not remaining in high school through graduation. Earlier this month, the California Department of Education released dropout data for the 2008-09 academic year, and San Bernardino County's dropout rate declined nearly 1 percent. At 21.6 percent for its four-year derived rate, it still is a number that is unacceptable despite its improvement over the past two years.

Compared to the state average, our county has closed the gap, but still trails by 1-tenth of a percent. The state average this year grew by nearly 3 percent, certainly not a good trend either. The dropout rates were released at the same time as data concerning enrollment and graduation rates.

The data are key to the long-term economic viability of our region. Without a highly educated and skilled workforce, our region won't be able to retain and attract high-paying jobs. The reality is that we cannot afford to lose students from continuing their educations, earning their high school diplomas and going on to colleges and universities.

Public schools in our county certainly have moved in the right direction since the state changed the way it was able to track students and come up with a more accurate dropout rate. Three years ago when the first set of data came out, the dropout numbers were abysmal for our county - 26.3 percent of our high school students were leaving over four-year periods. That ranked us fifth from the bottom among California's 58 counties.

As our dropout rates have improved over the past two years, San Bernardino County has jumped 15 spots in the state rankings. It's better, but still not where our students need to be to make our area more attractive to employers and businesses. That's why a year ago, I issued a Call to Action to get our community involved in ways to reduce dropout rates. Calling together leaders in business, faith-based organizations, labor, government and education, the focus on keeping students engaged has to remain a high priority for our public schools and communities.

The flip side of the dropout issue is graduation rates. At 72.7 percent, the graduation rate in San Bernardino trails the state average of 78.4 percent. Alarmingly, our county graduation rates have dropped for eight consecutive years from a high of 85.6 percent in 2001-02. With the state's new longitudinal data system to track individual students, the data is more accurately reflecting why students are leaving school. It is incumbent that our schools be able to reverse the graduation rate declines and give every student the opportunity to finish high school with the prospects of either moving forward to college or entering the workforce.

Finally, county enrollment in our schools is down for an unprecedented third time in the past four years. With 417,591 students for the 2009-10 academic year, student population levels in the county are at the lowest levels since the 2002-03 academic year. The drop in enrollment comes at a tough time for our schools, which have absorbed years of cuts to their funding. With fewer students, that translates into another drop in revenues at a time when many districts are struggling to make ends meet.

These issues point to the need for our communities - now more than ever - to support their local schools and districts to give students every opportunity they can to succeed. A critically important factor for any parent or guardian is the academic success of their child in school. Having access to data to point to dropout and graduation trends is essential to our continued work to improve graduation and college-going rates in this region. That will remain the focus of the schools and districts around San Bernardino County.