Stockton corrals dropouts back to school

12-03-2010

Blog by John Fensterwald/Educated Guess

In a city wracked by recession, Stockton Unified has succeeded in substantially lowering its high school dropout rate. Its improvement was singled out this week in the national report “Building a Grad Nation.” Stockton provided one of the few pieces of good news about California in the report, which was published by the non-profit policy group Civic Enterprises, and America’s Promise Alliance, which was started by former Secretary of State Colin Powell. After many years of falling, the national graduation rate rose from 72 percent in 2002 to 75 percent in 2008. In California it fell again, from 72.7 percent in 2002 to 71.2 percent in 2008. Nationwide, 120,000 more students graduated in 2008 compared with 2002. In California, there were 7,898 fewer graduates in 2008 than in 2002. Stockton was one of only six urban areas to increase its “Promoting Power Ratio” between 17 and 25 percentage points. A number related to the dropout rate, it measures the ratio of the number of 12th graders in a school to the number of 9th graders three years previously. (more…)

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