State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson today reported California’s cohort graduation rate climbed for the sixth year in a row in 2015 to a record high, with the biggest jump taking place among English Learners and migrant students.
Among students who started high school in 2011–12, 82.3 percent graduated with their class in 2015, up 1.3 percentage points from the year before. (See Table 1.) This increase means that 2,900 more students received their high school diploma last year than the year before. The state’s graduation rate has increased substantially since the class of 2010 posted a 74.7 percent rate.
The graduation rate of almost every student subgroup calculated by the California Department of Education (CDE) also rose in 2015. The rate of increase among English Learners was 4 percentage points—three times the statewide rate—while the rate of increase among African Americans was 2.6 percentage points—double the statewide rate.