Updated at 6:25 p.m. Aug. 11 with statements from CUSD spokesman Marcus Walton.
In 2010, boasted one of the highest graduation rates in Orange County.
It ranked third and also claimed the second-lowest dropout rate, according to the California Department of Education, which on Thursday released the latest figures for the class of 2010.
“Our teachers and administrators deserve a huge round of applause for this result,” said Trustee Anna Bryson.
The state used different methods of calculation this year, so the department cautioned against comparing Thursday’s figures with results from previous years.
The graduation rate in Capistrano Unified for the class of 2010 was 94.6 percent, right behind ’s 95.5 percent and top-achieving Irvine Unified with a graduation rate of 96.8 percent.
Neighboring school districts in South Orange County were not far behind. Saddleback Valley Unified had a 92.5 percent graduation rate, and boasted a graduation rate of 94 percent.
District spokesman Marcus Walton said that the fact that the state's numbers show that nearly 98 percent of Capistrano Unified students had either earned their diplomas, earned a special education certificate or are continuing to work towards high school completion "is a testament to the teachers, students and families that support our schools."
Capistrano far outpaced the average graduation rate in Orange County, which was 81.7 percent overall. Statewide, California saw a graduation rate of 74.4 percent last year.
Capistrano’s dropout rate of 2.4 percent was second-lowest in the county, behind only Irvine, which had a 2 percent dropout rate in 2010. Statewide, that figure was 18.2 percent; countywide, 14 percent.
Despite the good standing, Bryson said, school officials aim to improve the district's rank.
“Is it good enough?" she asked. "No, but I am confident we can and will continue to move the bar higher until we have the lowest dropout rates, not [second] in the county.”
Walton agreed, saying there is always room for improvement. "Which is why this district has chosen to focus on refining the development, design, and delivery of classroom lessons," he said.
Like state and countywide statistics, Capistrano’s numbers indicate an achievement gap—albeit narrower—between Hispanic and white students. The graduation rate among Hispanics locally is 89.4 percent (compared with the 95.8 percent graduation rate among whites), while statewide it is only 67.7 percent. In Orange County, the average graduation rate among Hispanics was slightly better, at 71.1 percent.
When looking strictly at the graduation rates for Hispanics, Capistrano Unified places fifth in the county, behind Los Alamitos (97.5 percent), Irvine (94.8 percent), Brea-Olinda Unified (94.3 percent) and Tustin Unifed (91.5 percent).
Still, Bryson believes Capistrano’s performance among Hispanics is a sign that a move the board of trustees made five years ago to focus on is working.
“These children will be a majority of the citizens in California's future, and they deserve our best effort,” she said. “The destiny of California will rest in large part on them. They can achieve, and it is imperative that they do.”
Bryson, a , said she is disturbed by the statewide statistics. “California's numbers overall are not acceptable, I will be interested to see how the state Department of Education and districts deal with them,” she said. “Wake up, California. There is no time left to move this issue.”
Graduation/dropout rates by high school for class of 2010
97.5 .09 95.7 2.5 Dana Hills High School 95.1 1.8 Junipero Serra High School 81.9 10.7 93.5 1.8 Tesoro High School 97.7 2* did not have a graduating class in 2010.
Or the same move the board made 10 years ago! Bryson is so full of herself.
"As a long term educator in CUSD, I have many other names, faces and stories such as this student’s that bear witness to our failed immigration policy. Five or six years ago our schools were overwhelmed with an influx of non English speaking students and the District responded with a full range of curriculum, trained faculty and testing to help this population. While language skills have improved, it is obvious now that despite the best efforts and intentions of individual teachers, the school system alone has failed to inspire the motivation necessary to pursue higher education and offers no effective way to enforce attendance. When students return home to overcrowded living conditions, this creates a nearly impossible environment for healthy living with a functioning family and an abysmal situation for any studying. Sadly, without the strong support of the other social institutions pointing our youth in the right direction, the phrase of “sinking to the lowest common denominator” comes to mind. (Continued...)
The most alarming trend is an increase in teen pregnancy. Nearly all will not consider abortion or adoption and it goes without saying that these kids are those who can least afford what it costs to raise a child. The failure of our federal and state government to enforce existing laws, the failure of our city to enforce building standards and codes to limit overcrowding (I guess denial of any problem is equally destructive) and the attitude of the Catholic Church that has all the signs of encouraging out of wedlock pregnancy certainly are major contributors to an out of control problem" ________________________________________________________ Continual rationalizing-denying-excusing by CUSD / OCSD / City of SJC / OC Supervisors/ Religous Doctrines--profiting from the big business of illegal immigration by extorting taxes from citizens to ineffectively throw at a problem they created and feed with low standards and lack of enforcing the law. Sick and wrong to exploit bright talented capable children for money who would have no problem learning English in 90 days and competency in Math if the people in charge weren't more interested in their personal ambitions than these kids.
California's public college and university budgets have been cut drastically, which means there are far fewer classes available to students each year. University students can't get the classes they want, so it's not uncommon for them to spend 5 years (or more) trying to get a four-year degree. As a result, fewer new students are accepted to public universities. At the same time, more students than ever are applying to UC/CSU schools, making the competition even stiffer. Even students with a high school GPA of 4.0 and higher are having trouble getting accepted to their first-choice schools. Attending a community college has formerly been seen as a sure-fire way of being accepted to a four-year university as a transfer student, but that's no longer the case because the UC/CSU schools are so impacted. Consequently, even transfer students are no longer sure to be accepted to a UC or CSU at all. In addition to this, it's getting harder and harder for community college students to get the classes they need to transfer, so a good number of them have to stay at community college for longer than two years before transferring. Despite all this, I'm happy to hear that CSUD's graduation numbers are high and the dropout numbers are low. It's certainly a step in the right direction.
If GPA requirements look tough, you ought to ask yourself what that says about about grade inflation in California's public schools..
The top 9% of all high school graduates and the top 9% of any given high school graduating class are guaranteed acceptance to a UC school. This doesn't mean it will be a school they want to attend. It's not difficult to get into UC Merced, but it's not impacted the way UCLA or even UCI are. It's far harder for our California students to get into a UC school today than it was 20 years ago. Capo Mom, I agree with your comment about grade inflation. The grading standards are not the same at all high schools, public or private. They're not even the same for teachers teaching the same course at the same school.
OK, so the mangled metaphor would have worked better had she instead said "a little sponge ready to **absorb**". Big deal, it was still fluent. I am therefore fully convinced that pulling a kid out of a class and giving him some extra help is the only missing ingredient in achieving fluency. So with only tepid hesitation I offer the following, and ask you to join me: KIM MCCARTHY CAPISTRANO USD TRUSTEE 2012 "No to unions. No to canines with perfect attendance. Yes to sponges and fluency"
Read 'em and weep: http://www.learnthatlanguagenow.com/articles/language-learning/learn-fluent-italian-in-under-3-months-2 English is easier than Italian. Anyone who disagrees is a fascist like Il Duce. And I will also note--pardon my English here--that Benito didn't need no pretentious diacritic marks. If Kim says it is 90 days to Fluency Nirvana, 90 days it is!
Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) , or the context-reduced language of academics, the language ability high school students need to be academically successful, will usually take five to seven years under ideal conditions to develop to a level commensurate with that of native speakers. Students who do not have Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency take 18 months to learn what comparable native speaking students learn in 10 months. Obviously, students who become socially proficient at an early age have an advantage in terms of developing academic proficiency. For this reason, Spanish language immersion programs may be attractive to families of native English speakers. But they will do little to help native Spanish speakers learn English. In CUSD only 4,789 K-12 students took the CELDT districtwide. That seems pretty low. One has to wonder what is really being done to help non-native English language students (who make up the majority of CUSD students) achieve Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency.
Comparing Las Palmas with Ambuehl Elementary, the other school mentioned by Kim McCarthy, shows the following results this past year. 3% of Ambuehl's students show advanced performance on the CELDT, 34% show early advanced, 47% show intermediate results, 7% show early intermediate and 9% show beginning. At Las Palmas 5% of students show advanced performance on the CELDT, 22% show early advanced, 40% show intermediate results, 20% show early intermediate and 13% show beginning results. Ambuehl seems to be at least on par with Las Palmas. Ambuehl's raw reading scores are actually (marginally) better. It should be remembered that the CELDT is only given to ELL students and results are based on small samples sizes so they should be interpreted carefully.
At Bernice Ayer where students from Las Palmas go, 14% of students show advanced performance, 45% show early advanced, 32% show intermediate results, 4% show early intermediate and 4% show beginning. There doesn't seem to be any clear advantage to Las Palmas bilingual immersion program according to the CELDT.