Data-Driven Education Journalism for the Golden State
Education News & Data
Local education reporting from every corner of California, grounded in California Department of Education data.
After excluding authorized charter schools, Twin Rivers Unified's district-operated schools still rank seventh among California's large districts for chronic absenteeism.
A spreadsheet expedition through 60,598 public schools ends in Bakersfield: gold for the Patriots of Independence Elementary, silver for the Stars of Freedom Middle, bronze for the Eagles of Liberty High.
California's English learner graduation rate surged from 70.9% to 79.7% but the 85,815-student cohort still sees 1 in 5 fail to graduate, with vast district variation.
In San Francisco Unified's district-operated schools, 54.6% of Black students were chronically absent in 2024-25, a 47-point gap above Asian students and one of the widest racial attendance divides in California.
Sacramento County's district-operated chronic absenteeism rate was 21.9% in 2024-25, 8.4 points above its pre-COVID baseline, with a wide gap between its highest and lowest districts.
In 47 California districts with meaningful sample sizes, Black students graduate at higher rates than white students, challenging default assumptions about racial gaps.
Chronic absenteeism dropped from a 30% peak to 19.4%, but improvement slowed to just 1 point last year. At that pace, a return to the 12.1% pre-pandemic baseline would take about eight more years.
Anaheim Union High rose from 86.8% to 94.4% across four straight reported gains, ranking second among California districts with 2025 graduating cohorts of 4,000 or more.
Pacific Islander, Native American, and Black students all have chronic rates above 31%. Every racial gap with white students is wider now than before the pandemic.
While every other equity gap in California graduation data narrowed since 2018, the student who is currently homeless gap widened from 7.5 to 10.7 points amid a growing cohort.
The nation's second-largest school district has 126,481 chronically absent students -- a population larger than most cities' entire school systems.
Nearly 40% of California districts recorded their highest-ever graduation rate in 2025, including six of the largest, while only 37 hit all-time lows.
The chronic rate for students who are currently homeless has fallen from its COVID peak, but the count reached a new high of 102,268 as California's housing crisis feeds its attendance crisis.
The white-Hispanic graduation gap in California shrank from 6.5 to 2.1 percentage points as 287,000 Hispanic students approach graduation parity with white peers.
739,000 Hispanic students are chronically absent, making up nearly two-thirds of the state's attendance crisis. The Hispanic-white gap doubled since pre-COVID.
