State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced California’s high school graduation rates under a new methodology that was adopted in response to a federal audit.

As part of this new methodology, three significant changes were implemented for calculating 2017 high school graduation rates: Students who receive an adult education high school diploma are no longer considered regular high school graduates, students who pass the California High School Proficiency Exam are no longer considered regular high school graduates, and students who transfer to adult education programs or a community college will remain in the denominator for the cohort calculation.

Using this new methodology, which reduces the number of students counted as graduates, 82.7 percent of California students who started high school as ninth graders in 2013-14 graduated on-time four years later in 2017. Under the old methodology, the statewide graduation rate was 83.8 percent in 2016.

Overall, the number of graduates increased from 2016 by over 900 for a total of 408,124 students. In addition, the number of students who dropped out in 2017 decreased by over 2,200 compared to last year.

In order to have the most recent data available for accountability, CDE has expedited the timeline for producing graduation rates for this year. Therefore, these new graduation rates for 2017 will be compared to the graduation rates for 2018 which will be released publicly in December, in time to be included in the fall 2018 dashboard.

For the complete report, visit cde.ca.gov.