Calculating and Reporting Graduation Rates in California

We found that the California Department of Education's (CDE) system of internal control did not provide reasonable assurance that reported graduation rates were accurate and complete. Specifically, CDE did not oversee or monitor the local entities’ internal controls over the reliability of Cohort Graduation Rate (ACGR) data. Based on our testing, we determined that CDE’s reported ACGR for school year (SY) 2013–14 was not accurate and complete. Consequently, both CDE and the Department risk using inaccurate and incomplete data when describing and reporting on (1) CDE’s progress toward raising graduation rates; and (2) CDE’s graduation rate accountability as an academic indicator to measure student achievement and school performance. We also found that CDE did not calculate its ACGR in accordance with Federal requirements. Specifically, we found that CDE removed students from the cohort who transferred to programs that did not lead to a regular high school diploma and included students as graduates who did not earn a regular high school diploma. We concluded that correcting for these errors would have decreased CDE’s SY 2013–14 ACGR by about 2 percentage points. Additionally, CDE did not ensure that students in the SY 2013–14 cohort were first-time ninth graders in SY 2010–11, the first year of the SY 2013–14 cohort.