Oakland dropout rate: Students need more options

Newly released state data shows California suffers from an abysmal 18.2 percent dropout rate — and the situation is more than twice as bad in Oakland, where one in two students fails to leave high school with a diploma.

That is a failure of epic proportions.

When it comes to our nation's dropout epidemic, there is no silver bullet solution. Winning this fight is going to take a lot of good ideas from a lot of good people — and a lot of hard work on top of that.

To that end, we're pleased that San Francisco Chronicle columnist Chip Johnson has offered his take. In a column in Tuesday's newspaper, Mr. Johnson called for a stronger vocational training program for Oakland's students.

"Clearly, the traditional paths aren't working here," Johnson wrote. "It should come as no surprise that many young men who drop out of school turn to gang and criminal lifestyles, which in turn has led to an explosion of violence on the streets of East Oakland this summer. Young, uneducated and without job skills or prospects, many of these young men take their places  in the ranks of criminal enterprises, and too many become fodder for the violence."

They're not just the perpetrators. A few years ago, when California Attorney General Kamala Harris was District Attorney in the city across the bay, she ordered a review of San Francisco's crime statistics — and found that 94 percent of murder victims younger than 25 years old were high school dropouts. In no other way were these victims more demographically alike than their educational status.  

These young people need options. "Some students don't possess the academic skills or interest to pursue a standard college preparatory track," he writes.

But currently, the closest thing Oakland schools have to vocational training is "work-based learning," a program that provides apprenticeships in health care and a couple of other fields.

Johnson argues that there needs to me more — and we agree. Vocational training isn't the only answer to this tragedy, but it needs to be part of the answer.

Rebekah Richards and Gregg Rosann are chief academic officer and president, respectively, of The American Academy, which works with school districts nationwide to re-enroll students through its innovative NoDropouts program. For more information on The American Academy and its services, visit www.nodropouts.com