Dropout Retention Program

Via the Sacramento Bee.

California has had a Dropout Prevention program for the better part of two decades, but you wouldn't know it by the numbers. In 1985, the Legislature created this categorical program amid public alarm about all the teenagers failing to earn diplomas. At the time, the state's graduation rate stood at a grim 69 percent, meaning nearly a third of ninth-graders failed to graduate with their classes four years later. Eighteen years and $242 million in taxpayer dollars later, that rate hasn't budged. In the state's most recent accounting of high school graduates, it was 68.9 percent.