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More LAUSD students are finishing all college-prerequisite courses — but not always with high grades
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LAUSD Superintendent Michelle King visits an eighth grade accelerated math class at Luther Burbank Middle School on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2016 during the first day of instruction.
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The Los Angeles Unified School District expects its high schoolers to take all of the courses required to get into a four-year state university in California. This year, more of the district's students met that expectation.
L.A. Unified Superintendent Michelle King announced Tuesday that 85 percent of last year's high school senior class passed the full sequence of courses that serve as pre-requisites for admission to a University of California or California State University school.
The Class of 2016 was the first cohort that L.A. Unified officials expected to finish this sequence, known as the "A-G" requirements; 74 percent of that group did so.
King shared the news during her annual State of the District address. Though the district's A-G completion rate is not quite the same as the district's official graduation rate — which the state will calculate and unveil in the coming months — King used the new A-G number as proof the district is making progress toward the lofty goal of "100 percent graduation."
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"We will never, ever, ever give up until we reach the goal," King said.
In order to be considered for admission, UC and CSU colleges require students to earn the letter grade of C or better in each course of the A-G sequence.
Though L.A. Unified high schoolers take the full sequence of courses, they can earn diplomas with grades of D or better in A-G courses. In the Class of 2017, 55 percent of L.A. Unified seniors passed the A-G sequence with a C or better, a district spokeswoman said.
King said Tuesday more than 26,000 L.A. Unified students — 85 percent of the students who began the year as seniors — earned diplomas.
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