Superintendent's Message

Kenneth M. Young
Riverside County Superintendent of Schools

Completing school is worth it

The California Department of Education (CDE) has released a new report on student dropout and graduation rates in California. For the first time, dropout and graduation information has been compiled using individual student-level data, providing the most complete statewide information available to date.

This newly available data enables school districts and the state to better understand what happens to students who leave school prematurely. The new data system allows school districts to determine whether students marked as transfers do actually enroll in another school. If the student does not show up at another California public school, their home district can try to determine what happened to the student and target additional efforts to help them complete their education.

For the 2006-07 school year, 67.6 percent of students in California public schools graduated from high school, 24.2 percent dropped out of school, and 8.2 percent either completed four years of high school but did not graduate, withdrew from school and transferred to a private school, left the state, or earned a General Education Degree (GED). Riverside County's dropout rate of 23.7% is below the state average, including our numbers for African American, Hispanic and other minority students, but the numbers are unacceptable. (A complete chart of the drop out numbers can be found at www.cde.ca.gov.)

Not finishing high school has large negative implications for students. Research shows that more than half of those who drop out of high school will be unemployed or collect welfare during a significant portion of their adult life, and they are three and a half times more likely to commit crimes than those who remain in school and receive a high school diploma. Those who drop out of high school have a higher likelihood of having children who will, in-turn, drop out of high school and perpetuate the poverty-crime cycle, thus exacerbating the problem.

The Riverside County Office of Education is deeply committed to do all that we possibly can to stem the tide of student dropouts in our county. We are focusing our efforts in two ways:

One is by providing a variety of proven leadership and instructional strategies to school districts to help create an effective learning environment for students attending public schools in Riverside County.

The second is by tracking down as many students as possible who have dropped out of school and bringing them back into a completely different educational setting through custom programs operated by the Riverside County Office of Education.

The first program for returning dropouts will begin this fall at the recently dedicated Riverside County Office of Education Regional Learning Center located on the Mt. San Jacinto Community College campus in San Jacinto. This program will be replicated for students in the Riverside, Perris and Banning areas through our existing Regional Learning Centers.

This is a huge undertaking—one that is deserving of our best efforts, and as the Riverside County Superintendent of Schools, I have fully committed our office to this important work.

Kenn Young