LOS ANGELES — The state of California and the Los Angeles Unified School District achieved record-high graduation rates last year despite the lingering effects of the crippling pandemic and a historic spike in student absences, prompting praise and skepticism over the new numbers.
For the high school class that graduated in 2022, the percentage of students who earned a diploma in four years in Los Angeles Unified — the nation’s second-largest school system — was 86%. The rate for all of California was 87.4%. The graduation figures were released this week.
For the state, this figure was a nearly 4 percentage point increase from the 83.6% rate of the 2020-21 academic year. For L.A. Unified, there was about a 4.5 percentage point increase from 81.6%, a continuation of an ongoing trend of annual graduation-rate increases.
