Superintendent Wes Smith says the graduation and dropout rates for Morgan Hill Unified School District, reported Wednesday by the California Department of Education, are not accurate.
Smith claims that MHUSD’s graduation rate is higher and the dropout rate is actually lower than what the CDE reported for 2011-12. Based on current CDE data, MHUSD has the lowest graduation rate in the county.
Smith contacted the Times this morning, claiming that MHUSD’s 78.4 percent graduation rate is not, in fact, the lowest among school districts in Santa Clara County.
Smith said his staff is working diligently with the CDE to find out why there is such a disparity in the district’s statistics versus the CDE’s California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (referred to as CALPADS).
“We are contesting the data being shared by the CDE. We are showing different numbers than they are showing,” said Smith, who stopped short of sharing any of the district’s adjusted graduation/dropout rates.
Smith said the district is working with the CDE to “correct” the numbers and that and update on the process could take several days.
Just as alarming as the low graduation rate is MHUSD’s high 17 percent dropout rate – which climbed to more than 21 percent when broken down into the subgroup of Hispanic students. The state’s dropout rate is at 13.2 percent for the 2011-12 class and 16.2 for the Hispanic subgroup.
“There is a disparity in the data,” maintains Smith, who was recently honored by the Association of California School Administrators as Santa Clara County’s “Superintendent of the Year.”
If there are any errors with the CDE’s data, it wouldn’t be the first time a South County school district challenged it.
GUSD administrators conducted its own investigation after the CDE reported that Gilroy’s dropout rate for the 2008-09 school year was 22 percent for grades 9-12.
GUSD officials suspected the 2008-09 dropout rate – significantly higher than GUSD’s 13 percent dropout rate in 2007-08 – correlated with the first-time implementation of a new statewide data system.
Administrators found skewed statistics from information incorrectly inputted pertaining to GUSD students who moved out of the state, students who moved out of the country and students who transferred to private schools.
GUSD confirmed of the 186 students reported as 9-12 grade dropouts, 63 fell into the above categories. This adjusted GUSD’s actual 2008-09 dropout rate to 15.5 percent.
The dropout and graduation data is generated by a relatively new formula called the four-year adjusted cohort, which the California Department of Education instituted three years ago. Each cohort begins with a group of incoming ninth-graders and is subsequently adjusted during the four-year high school career, taking into account students who transfer in or out, emigrate to another country or die during that four-year period.
The cohort formula essentially holds school districts accountable for tracking every single student. Any pupil who is classified as a “dropout” will influence the overall cohort graduation/dropout rates.
While Gilroy Unified School District showed great strides with an 85 percent graduation rate and a 9.4 dropout rate for the 2011-12 class, MHUSD’s graduation rate fell short of the state’s 78.5 percent rate and the county’s 81.1 percent.
Dr. Norma Martinez-Palmer, MHUSD Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services, stated Wednesday that “the rates are not where we want them be.”
Martinez-Palmer added that the dropout rate is “not acceptable at all,” but must be “looked at with a careful lens” because a student who may have just left the area and not informed the district could be included in those figures. She said it will be a priority to check into instances like that to determine what MHUSD’s actual dropout rate really is.
However, GUSD superintendent Debbie Flores certainly stands by the same numbers calculated by CALPADS, which shows Gilroy’s dropout rate cut in half over a five-year span and is now under 10 percent.
“We’re thrilled to see these results, but not surprised because these areas have been a major focal point for the district,” Flores said. “We have several programs that serve potential dropouts to help them meet the graduation requirements and graduate.”
Flores said the steady improvement is the result of a district-wide initiative focusing on identifying at-risk students before it’s too late with programs such as Advance Path and California Student Opportunity and Access Program.
Flores added that Advance Path, a dropout recovery program located on the Gilroy High School campus, and Cal-SOAP, a state program designed to help raise the achievement levels of low-income students, are in place to identify at-risk students as early as possible. However, the district has put just as much emphasis on “increasing the rigor” for students who are performing well so they meet the requirements to enter into the University of California and California State University systems upon graduation.
“We outperformed the county and the state by quite a bit,” said Flores of Gilroy’s grad rate, which surpassed the state’s 78.5 percent and even the county’s 81.1 percent. “We’ve been anxiously awaiting these results and are very excited to see these results.”
That is not the case in Morgan Hill, where Ann Sobrato High School’s graduation rate of 81.8 percent for 2011-12 students was 10 percent lower from the previous class. Live Oak High’s graduation rate did bump up four points to 84 percent, though.
“The rates are not where we want them to be,” said Martinez-Palmer, who is in her first year with MHUSD after spending 32 years in the San Jose Unified School District. “I am concerned, but I am confident that we can do better (as a district).”
Other districts in surrounding areas also fared better than MHUSD. This includes:
-East Side Union High School District (79.5 percent grad rate, 15.2 percent dropout rate)
-San Benito High School District (87.1 percent, 9.3 percent)
-Aromas/San Juan Unified (92.6 percent, 4.9 percent)
-Pajaro Valley Unified (85.7 percent, 7.4 percent)
-Santa Cruz High School District (90.8 percent, 3.4 percent)
“Overall, my impression is that we can do better and we will do better,” said Martinez-Palmer of MHUSD’s showing in the state statistics.
When studying MHUSD’s subgroups, a disparity is evident between Hispanic students’ 72.1 percent graduation rate and 21.6 percent dropout rate, compared to the 83.5 graduation rate and 13.4 dropout rate for white students. Although the Hispanic subgroup did show a four-point increase in graduation rates, MHUSD’s dropout rate for that group remains five percentage points higher than the state’s 16.2 percent dropout rate. The MHUSD district-wide dropout rate rose almost two percentage points in that time.
“We definitely don’t want to see an increase (in dropout rates),” Martinez-Palmer said.
MHUSD has also come under fire from a group of several hundred Hispanic parents, who call themselves People Acting in Community Together. The group claims MHUSD is underserving their children.
PACT parents have demanded the creation of a second charter elementary school, run by the same educators at highly successful Gilroy Prep, as one remedy to the problem.
GUSD’s Hispanic subgroup graduation rate rose from 72.2 percent in 2010-11 to 81.9 percent in 2011-12. The white subgroup also saw an increase from 87.4 to 91.2 percent.
“Our dropout rate has been steadily dropping and our graduation rate has been steadily increasing, which is what we want,” Flores said.
Gilroy’s two major high schools, Gilroy and Christopher, have 89.4 and 93.9 percent graduation rates. In Morgan Hill, at 84 percent and 81.8 percent, Live Oak and Ann Sobrato high schools were above the county and state graduation rates.
GUSD
Dropout: 9.4 percent
Graduation: 85 percent
MHUSD
Dropout: 17 percent
Graduation: 78.4 percent
County
Dropout: 13.2 percent
Graduation: 81.1 percent
