Clark County, Washoe County dropout rates decline

Saturday, Jan. 13, 2001 | 10:14 a.m.

Clark County's high school dropout rate declined slightly to 6.9 percent last year even though enrollment in the district increased.

Washoe County's rate dropped from 7.3 percent in 1998 to 5.2 percent last year. The national rate is 5 percent.

Washoe County's drop out rate stood at 8.6 percent in 1994.

"This is a major accomplishment," Washoe School District Superintendent Jim Hager said Friday. He said work still must be done to curb the dropout rate for Hispanics in the district, which is nearly double the district average at 9.1 percent.

Clark County District Superintendent Carlos Garcia said initiatives aimed at keeping students in school helped the dropout rate decrease even as enrollment jumped by about 3,400 students.

Despite the good news, district officials in Clark County said they have a long way to go in addressing the dropout problem, especially because about 7 of every 100 students did not earn diplomas in 1999-2000.

Compared with the previous year, the district's dropout rate last year fell 2.1 percentage points.

In 1998-99, about 4,788 - or 9 percent - of the Clark district's 53,198 high school students dropped out. That figure went down during the past school year, when 3,905 of the district's 56,597 students were classified as dropouts.

"We'd like to see it down to about 3 percent," Maria Chairez, director of the district's Secondary Success Programs, said Thursday.

The statistics cannot be compared yet with other school districts in the state. Keith Rheault, interim superintendent of the Nevada Department of Education, said the statewide figures will be released in the spring and that the department needs to verify Clark County's numbers.

Garcia said the district recently improved services to immigrant and nonspeaking English students and introduced tougher truancy laws. Classes offered before and after school to students who need to make up credits have helped too, Garcia said.

Garcia added that the decline is especially significant because it offers the first two-year comparison of the statistics under a new calculation formula used by the state starting with the 1998-99 school year.

Under the new formula, many students who used to be categorized as dropouts are excluded from the numbers. The new numbers exclude students who transfer to another school but fail to request transcripts, students 18 and younger who pass their graduate equivalency diploma exam, and students who are enrolled in an adult high school diploma program.