LOS ANGELES
Amid the verdant lawn and leafy trees of the tidy Jefferson Senior High School campus, you’ll see something troubling: a police officer patrols the grounds and a sign warns that guns are illegal.
The biggest problem here, however, is what you don’t see — all the dropouts.
With a 58 percent dropout rate, Jefferson has the worst record in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The district average is 33.6 percent, compared with a statewide average of 24.2 percent, according to recent state figures.
“It’s horrendous,” said Debra Duardo, director of the dropout prevention and recovery program at LAUSD, the nation’s second-largest district.
While half the students typically quit urban schools nationwide, Jefferson is at the lower end of the spectrum of so-called “dropout factories” because of a concentration of factors that are rarely all present at schools in other cities.
Located in South Los Angeles, where new immigrants mostly from Mexico and Central America settle, the area has a large minority population and high poverty.
