By Stephen Wall and Craig Shultz
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California’s high school graduation rate rose for the seventh year in a row and reached a record high for the class of 2016.
Among students who started high school in 201213, 83.2 percent graduated with their class in 2016, up from 82.3 percent the year before, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced Tuesday. That translates to 4,917 more graduates than in the class of 2015.
The state’s graduation rate has climbed 8.5 percentage points since the class of 2010 posted a 74.7 percent rate, state Department of Education data show.
Three of the four counties in the region saw the number of graduates grow by at least 1.8 percentage points, but Orange was the only large county to graduate at least 90 percent of its class.
Los Angeles County, which has by far the most students in the state, was below the average for the class of 2016, but above last year. Of the 121,039 students who were part of the class of 2016, 81.3 percent graduated, up from 78.7 percent one year ago.
Orange County showed a slight increase to 90.8 percent from 90.0 for the class of 2015.
Riverside County showed a significant increase, graduating 89.2 percent of its students, up from 87.4 percent. Though San Bernardino County was slightly below the state average at 82.6 percent, it made significant improvement over last year’s 80.7 percent.
The graduation rate rose among almost every student subgroup. The biggest increases took place among English learners (up 2.7 percentage points), African American students (1.8 percentage points) and Latino students (1.5 percentage points), Torlakson said.
Additional state dollars have helped cut class sizes, restore art and music classes that were slashed during the recession, as well as expand career technical education programs.
Common Core academic standards that stress hands-on learning have made school more interesting and relevant, Torlakson said. Districts have more control over spending decisions, and those with the greatest needs get more state dollars, he said.
A critical job, he said, is to narrow the achievement gap between Asian and white students and Latino and African American students.
Along with the rising graduation rate, fewer students dropped out of school. The dropout rate declined from 10.7 percent in 2015 to 9.8 percent in 2016.
Schools and districts are putting more effort into raising graduation rates, said Morgan Polikoff, an associate professor of education at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. Also, educators have created alternative approaches, including ways to help students who fail a class make up credits by taking online courses with video lectures, practice problems and tests.
Most believe these methods of recovering credits are watering down the standards, he said. “What you hope isn’t happening is they’re getting people through high school by lowering standards through the floor,” Polikoff said. He added that the state eliminated the high school exit exam as a graduation requirement in 2016, removing another hurdle for some students.