http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c … 17JCC0.DTLOne in five students dropped out of a California high school last year - about the same as the year before, state Superintendent Jack O'Connell announced Tuesday. The graduation rate also held at about 68 percent.
The news that little had changed - despite O'Connell's calls for improvement and years of pointing to the moral imperative of helping failing students - prompted a round of criticism among advocates and critics of public education and from at least one candidate for the top school job.
"We don't need another report to tell us that we are failing miserably to educate the future citizens of California," said state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-East Los Angeles, who is running for state superintendent next year.
With more than 2 million high school students enrolled in 2007-08, the dropout rate stands at 20 percent (106,073 students), down slightly from 21 percent in the 2006-07 school year (109,011 students). (Not a simple calculation, the rate is an "estimate of the percent of students who would drop out in a four-year period based on data from a single year," analysts said.)
But at least they feel good about themselves.
So everyone always talks about how we have to improve education, so how would you go about fixing this problem?
