SLO County schools show progress post-COVID. See how your district measures up
San Luis Obispo County school districts are still struggling with chronic absenteeism, recent data shows — but most districts are making improvements.
The California Department of Education released new data Thursday via the California School Dashboard, a digital database that houses statewide education statistics.
The data for SLO County shows that students are still absent from school at rates higher than before COVID — an issue administrators nationwide have struggled to combat in the post-pandemic years.
A student is considered chronically absent if they miss more than 10% of instructional days enrolled. In 2019, state absenteeism levels sat at 10.1%, but they shot up to 30% in 2022. The state average has incrementally decreased in the following years, hitting 18.6% in 2024.
High levels of chronic absenteeism have raised concerns about California students’ academic recovery post-COVID as well as school funding concerns. Since California bases school funding on attendance rather than enrollment, high absenteeism rates can significantly impact a district’s allotted budget.
The new data offers insight into districts’ graduation rates, suspension rates, college and career readiness and progress among English-learning students, as well as an in-depth look at districts’ standardized test results, which were released in mid-October.
Take a look at the data below to see how your district measures up.
Chronic absenteeism
Most local districts sit well under the state average for chronic absenteeism, recent data shows.
But outliers like the Shandon, Paso Robles and Atascadero districts show that absenteeism still has a grip on some SLO County schools.
The Lucia Mar district boasted the lowest absenteeism rate in the county at 12.2%.
San Miguel Joint Union showed the largest improvement, down 11.1 percentage points from 25% in 2023 to 13.9 in 2024.
Graduation rates, college and career readiness
While SLO County’s high school graduation rates beat the state average, graduates show varied levels of college and career readiness, data shows.
Paso Robles had the lowest graduation rate in SLO County, sitting at 89.1% — still 2.4 percentage points above the state average.
On the other hand, Coast Unified had the highest rate with 100% of students graduating in 2024, according to the data.
Other districts hovered in the mid-90% range.
And while most students graduated high school, their college and career readiness varied greatly from district to district.
In Coast Unified, over 80% of students left high school ready for their next steps, while only 42.1% of graduates in Paso Robles did.
Shandon had the lowest college and career readiness rate at 31.3% — but the district also saw a leap of over 20 percentage points from the previous year’s rate of 10.6%.
English-language learner progress
Only three SLO County districts surpassed the state average for progress among English-language learners, highlighting a need for greater support for non-English-speaking students.
The ELL metric measured the percentage of English-language learners who made progress toward English proficiency. The statewide average sits at 45.7%.
But SLO County’s average sits around 44%, with Coast Unified leading the pack at 57.6% and San Miguel trailing behind at 26.3%. San Miguel saw a steep drop of over 34 percentage points in this metric, compared to 2023 numbers.
More than 50% of English-learning students showed progress toward standards at San Luis Coastal and Templeton schools, while all other districts remained below the state average.
And the shoddy success in progress among ELL students seeps into other metrics as well. On average, SLO County’s English-learners performed worse academically and were absent more often, compared to their counterparts.
ELL students also had lower average graduation rates in most districts where data was available.
Suspension rates
Similarly, disadvantaged students — including English learners, Hispanic students, students with disabilities, homeless students and foster youth — were more likely to be suspended in many districts.
Around 3.2% of students statewide were suspended at least one day. Most SLO County districts sat at or below that average.
Coast Unified had a higher suspension rate, with 5.7% of students in 2024. Atascadero sat at 4.6% and Lucia Mar at 4%.
In Coast Unified, disadvantaged students were suspended at disproportionate rates.
The district’s data shows 15.7% of long-term English learners were suspended at least one day, as were 9.8% of homeless students and 8% of students with disabilities.
White students were suspended at below average rates.
In Atascadero, 10.7% of Black students were suspended, as were 9.4% of students with disabilities and 8.6% of homeless students. Only 3.5% of white students were suspended.
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