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In the spring of 2005, a Harvard University report of the Civil Rights Project came out detailing the "graduation" crisis in California. I knew the problem was serious, having seen snapshots of enrollment figures over the years of various Los Angeles Unified School District high schools and being drawn to the numbers that showed huge differences between the freshman and senior enrollment.

Year-to-year enrollment snapshots that parents might visit to evaluate a school such as LAUSD’s Accountability Report Card (SARC) tell the reader very little about what is going on.  For example, in 2004 at Westchester High School, the 9th grade enrollment was 1143, 10th grade enrollment was 620 students, 11th grade with 546 students and the 12th grade with 331.  What does that tell you?  Not a lot, except that the 9th grade class is significantly larger than the senior class.  It could be something simple like the districts moving kids from one overcrowded school to Westchester, or the freshman numbers could be a reflection of students being held back.

To obtain a better picture of the enrollment dynamics, I chose to look at the data over a period of years from a “class perspective” by sorting the data by graduating class.  I tracked 291 graduating classes from 29 schools in all eight LAUSD districts.  Once I began connecting the dots, it became clear that neither shifting seats nor grade retention was the case.  What I found was disturbing and it appears to support, in part, the Harvard Study. 

Graduation is the least of LAUSD’s problems.  Huge numbers of students are not even getting into their sophomore or junior years, much less as seniors.  Also, not all seniors graduate or even pass the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE).  Some examples of the data include Venice High School, where the average loss of enrollment from 1997 through 2006 is running at 51%, or 460 students per graduating class!

Van Nuys High School is losing 46% or 289 students for each graduating class.  San Fernando High School has lost 63% or 389 students for each of graduating class.  South Gate High School loses an average of 743 students per graduating class.  The worst rate of attrition of the 29 schools I studied had a loss of 69% or 1219 students for each graduating class.  Only one school in my study of 29 high schools had a loss of students below 20% (most were well over 30%) and that was Marshall High School, though it still lost over 300 students per class.

No schools seem to be immune to this disturbing phenomenon. Even award-winning schools like El Camino Real, noted for its achievements with Academic Decathlon teams, and Granada Hills Charter with its Science Bowl achievements, lose on an average 338 students and 343 students per graduating class respectively.  Roughly 33% of the students at these schools do not return for their senior year. Most recently, El Camino’s graduating Class of 2006 lost 427 students, almost 40%.  District-wide, graduating classes between 1997 and 2006 lost 49.2% or 28,123 students each year.  Since 2003,  enrollment losses at all LAUSD high schools increased from 53.6% to 56.2% so it is difficult to attribute any particular schools drop in enrollment to the ongoing building program and transfer of students therein.

LAUSD is not merely a district with problems, it is a broken district.  The charts showing the high school enrollments of 291 graduating classes from 29 high schools over 9 years visually reinforce the real story of an enrollment freefall of a district bleeding with students of unfulfilled potential.  Charts of the schools are available here.

Last year the entire Class of 2006 for LAUSD lost almost 39,000 students over their four-year stay in high school.  If these young people are not your sons or daughters, then it will be their peers who will find themselves working low-paying service jobs or on public assistance.  While we cannot attribute the loss of all of these students to dropping out (some may have moved out of the city, or sought out-of-district schools or private schools), certainly a sizeable number of them had in all likelihood, given up and cut short their education. 

David Coffin is a California resident and education activist.  This article previously appeared here.