In the school year 2019-20, the Partnership graduation rates increased seven percentage points from last year to 87%, an all-time high for us. By comparison, the state of California’s 2020 graduation rate is 84%, down from 85% in 2019. LA Unified’s 2020 graduation rate is 80%, up two percentage points from the previous year. The grad rate, reported by California’s Department of Education, measures the cohort of students who started with our schools in 2016-17 and graduated in June 2020.

Below is a list of our graduation wins in the 2019-20 academic year include the following:

• • All five Partnership high schools had an increase in their grad rates;
  • Four out of five high schools grew five percentage points or more;
  • The one school that didn’t grow five points, our Math, Science, and Technology Magnet Academy at Roosevelt, achieved a 100% graduation rate;
  • Santee Education Complex grew 10 percentage points over last year (78% to 88%);
  • Roosevelt Senior High School grew seven percentage points (74% to 81%) over last year and Mendez High School and Jordan High School each grew five percentage points from last year, from 84% to 89% and 71% to 76% respectively; and
  • Our dropout rate decreased 3.4 percentage points, from 12.8% to 9.4%.

Jordan High School saw an 11 percentage point increase over 2019 in the percentage of Black students graduating, rising from 83% to 94%. Santee Education Complex, which had the highest overall growth, saw a 12 percentage point increase over 2019 in the percentage of Black students graduating, rising from 76% to 88%, and the number of Latinx students earning diplomas grew 10 percentage points, from 79% to 88%. Santee Principal Violeta Ruiz attributes the gains to ensuring student accountability for courses and grades, intervention by staff when needed, credit recovery, and “collaboration and consistency.”

“I want to congratulate our whole network of schools,” says Partnership CEO Joan Sullivan. “The work of preparing our students for high school graduation and college completion begins the day our youngest scholars walk onto our elementary campuses for the first time and is achieved through teamwork, especially with our LA Unified partners. I send special gratitude to our five high schools for their sustained strategic effort over multiple years, and for achieving these graduation increases in 2020, one of the most difficult years on record for public education.”