LAUSD reports highest graduation rate in history

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) announced Friday morning a historic graduation rate of 87% for the 2023-2024 school year. The previous school year’s graduation rate was 84%.

Partially credited for this success was the availability of summer school, with more than 100,000 students attending and receiving credit recovery and make-up time, allowing them to graduate.

Another district milestone was increasing the A through G completion rate percentage. This means students pass a set of specific high school courses with a C or better to meet the criteria for acceptance into colleges and universities across California. 

This past school year, the A through G completion rate increased from 53% to 56.4%. 

LAUSD Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said this data is more meaningful and powerful because they are talking about students who live at or below poverty levels. A significant number of them are English Language Learners (ELL), Latino students, homeless students and foster care kids. 

“These are phenomenal sets of data that represent the hard work of our teachers, our support staff, the coherence across the district, the leadership of our principals, and the vision of this board,” said Carvalho in the press conference held at Thomas Jefferson High School in South Los Angeles. 

LAUSD placement on State Dashboard

The California School Dashboard is an online tool that provides important information on schools, districts and county offices of education to provide a more complete picture of what contributes to a positive educational experience for students.

The highest level of performance is blue, followed by green, yellow and orange, with the lowest being red. This past academic year, Carvalho said LAUSD made history with the improvement of four of the seven key indicators monitored across the state of California. These are chronic absenteeism, suspension rate, English language progress, graduation rate, college career, English language arts and mathematics. 

For the first time in history, LAUSD avoided the red and orange colors. It obtained a blue on the suspension rate and a green on the graduation rate and college/career.

“For the first time in the history of our district, when we compare ourselves to other districts and the state, once again, we outperform them,” said Carvalho. 

LAUSD Board member Nick Melvoin said this shows commitment to the board's and the superintendent's vision. This includes expanding early education to a longer school year, the winter academy and intervention in English and math, not only in high school but from elementary to middle school. There are also more opportunities for arts and music.

“We are seeing promising results,” Melvoin said. 

Protecting fearful students

Members of the LAUSD district ensured to continue working diligently to provide the best education possible for students while also protecting immigrant students and their families as well as LGBTQ+ students. 

From the moment Donald Trump won the presidency, a lot of families have been hesitant to continue taking their children to school for fear of being deported. The superintendent said that to strengthen this commitment, the LAUSD board adopted four resolutions focusing on protection and training so employees learn the best ways to react. 

“We will be a school system, regardless of threats, that will protect our students, our workforce and will collaborate at a high level of collaboration with the city and the county,” said Carvalho. 

Melvoin added that they will do everything in their power, and sometimes “beyond our power” to protect students, families and staff.

“We are not going to respond to every craziness that comes out of Washington. Some of them we’re going to let implode [on] themselves, like certain nominations,” Melvoin said. “It’s an exciting day. We have a lot of work to do but we are on the right track.”

The proposed resolutions come at the right time, mainly with the constant decline of student enrollment. Carvalho said it has been happening for more than 15 years. The decline has been as high as 4% per year and in the last few years, it has been from about 1.5% to 1.9%, depending on the time of the year. 

LAUSD currently serves over 563,000 students from Pre-K through Adult education. The District has over 1,400 schools and centers, including primary school centers, magnet schools, and affiliated and independent charter schools. Approximately 84% of the students are either eligible for free and reduced lunch, are English learners, or are in the foster care system.