Ventura County’s high school graduation rate improved for the seventh consecutive year according to data released by the California Department of Education. The graduation rate for the 2015-16 school year was 85.6 percent, which is up from 84.5 percent in 2014-15. In the same period, the county’s dropout rate decreased from 8.3 percent to 7.7 percent.

Ventura County’s graduation rate in 2015-16 exceeded the statewide rate of 83.2 percent by 2.4 percentage points. The county dropout rate was 2.1 percentage points better than the statewide dropout rate of 9.8 percent. Both the Ventura County and statewide graduation rates are record highs in the seven year period since the Department of Education changed the method it uses to collect the data. The revised method implemented for the 2009-10 school year follows the same groups of students, or cohorts, during the data collection period.

The figures show the Ventura County graduation rate also improved in 2015-16 for five major subgroups including English learners, special education students, foster youth, migrant education students and socioeconomically disadvantaged students.

You can see graduation and dropout rates for individual districts and schools on the California Department of Education’s DataQuest website.