Ask a Librarian

Schools must publish a SARC (School Accountability Report Card) annually that provides a lot of information about the school, including dropout and graduation rates. You can find SARC reports on the Modesto City Schools website below.

You can also search for newspaper articles. For stories about local schools, you'll want to use the local newspaper, the Modesto Bee. We have the Modesto Bee  in our Access World News database, which you can find on the Articles & Databases link on our home page. I searched the lead/first paragraph for dropout rate and got a number of results, ranked by date. When I changed the ranking to relevance, some older articles  that look like they will be helpful moved to the top. 

Also under Articles & Databases, you will find CQ Researcher, a database of articles on social issues such as yours at the national level. Using articles focused at the national level can help provide you with a wider perspective to local issues that you may be researching. You can start your paper with using the wider perspective and then use local schools as examples of broader issues about dropout rates.

A database similar to CQ that you should also try is Issues & Controversies by Facts on File.