Orange County Register

Orange Grove column: Accurate dropout rate a good start

By Lucy Dunn, President and CEO of the Orange County Business Council. For more information, visit www.ocbc.org.

To further its goal of increasing educational excellence in Latino neighborhoods, Orange County's Latino Educational Attainment initiative commands parents to "learn what my child needs to graduate successfully from high school."

The release of high school dropout rates statewide this summer by the California Department of Education, along with the impending release of a major new consultant report on the state's student data information needs, revealed that all parents of California's schoolchildren need to take this commandment to heart.

In 2006-07, nearly a quarter of public school students in California dropped out. This sobering statistic has enormous significance, not only for the dubious economic future of these young people but also for the state's economic climate and workforce needs.

With this new data, we at least are beginning to get an honest assessment of where we stand today in California public education. For the first time, specific and individualized data is allowing us to track students with more accuracy, rather than making an educated guess about the scope of the drop out problem. This increased accountability at the state level is to be applauded. It increases the need to continue building a comprehensive information system for our schools that give educators and parents a clear understanding of student progress throughout the educational experience.

Still, the enormity of how many students fail to complete their educations remains one of the major challenges of California's education and business communities. As significant as a state average 24 percent dropout rate may seem, the rate is worse, even doubled, among limited-English proficient and at-risk students. Sadly, these students from highly diverse backgrounds will be unprepared for the high-skill, high-wage careers of today's Orange County economy – unless we turn around the dropout rate and increase the graduation rate right here in our schools and communities.

At the Orange County Business Council, workforce development is central to our mission. Preparing students for technical training, higher education and, ultimately, successful careers is admittedly good for our affiliated businesses that require skilled employees in order to remain competitive. But we at the council know that, more importantly, it's a way of ensuring that students from every corner of the county enter the workforce prepared to share in the benefits of prosperity.

To further those goals, we work in partnership with the Orange County Department of Education and other groups on the aforementioned Latino Educational Attainment initiative. LEA's widely circulated "Ten Education Commandments for Parents" form the foundation of a project that is successfully sparking a strong commitment to education among Latino parents and neighborhood-based groups. This initiative is especially focused on areas that are home to the county's 100 low-performing schools, where increasing student success is most needed. And we're seeing results: Orange County's dropout rate is considerably lower than the statewide average.

The new statistics on the inordinately high number of students falling between the cracks should make us take a long hard look at statewide accountability, and where student intervention and assistance is most needed. As State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said when releasing the report, " … using student-level data, we can improve the accuracy of our count of how many students drop out, increase accountability, and focus on preventing dropouts."

Ultimately, all of us – educators, business executives, community leaders and parents – must find a way to make "Stay in school" not just an empty cliché but a commandment that our children follow with passion and dedication. Nothing less than their future, and California's, is at stake.

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