How bad is Fresno Unified's dropout rate?

Maybe not as bad as previously advertised.

Fresno is among six of the state’s largest urban districts that contracted with Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) at the University of California at Berkeley to study the dropout problem, including tracking students who leave high school to determine whether they truly dropped out or pursued educations elsewhere.

The PACE report, titled “Beyond the Numbers,” dramatically lowers the calculated dropout rates of the six districts from the 45%-60% range calculated by other authorities to as low as 9.4% in Fresno. LA Unified had the highest at 25.7%.

The largest single factor in PACE’s revised dropout rates is the number attributed to students who leave one district but enroll in another. In Fresno, for instance, PACE found that more than 31% of ninth-graders move to other schools. But PACE apparently did not find out what happened to those students who left.

Dan Walters writing in The Sacramento Bee's Capitol Alert has the full details.

The PACE report was released less than a week before the state Department of Education is scheduled to release its annual dropout report. The PACE report is available here.