Dropout rate lowest in a decade

The high school dropout rate in Massachusetts dipped below 3 percent last school year for the first time in a decade, according to a state report released yesterday.

The rate of 2.9 percent was a half percentage point lower than the previous year. However, the rate still represents 8,585 students in grades 9-12 who decided to give up on school – a number that state and local educators say is still too high.

Mitchell Chester, the state’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, said that “troubling’’ gaps still exist between students of different socioeconomic backgrounds, but that every major student group experienced improvements in rates.

For instance, 7.5 percent of Latino students dropped out last year, down from 8.3 percent the previous year, according to the report. By contrast, 1.8 percent of white students quit school, compared with 2.2 percent the previous year.

Chester attributed some of the decline to more public attention being placed on the dropout problem.

“I think school districts are more tuned into the fact they have too many dropouts,’’ he said. “They are doing a better job of identifying students at risk of dropping out and reaching out to them earlier.’’

Governor Deval Patrick, who called the new rates “terrific progress’’ in a statement yesterday, has been pushing the Legislature to raise the age at which students can drop out from 16 to 18. Such a move would force schools to adopt new programs that cater to these academically struggling students – a concern among some local officials grappling with severe budget cuts.

The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Education is expected to release a bill in the coming weeks.

Several cities, such as Lawrence, Fall River, and Holyoke, saw notable declines in their dropout rates.

In Boston, where curbing the rate has been a top priority for Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Superintendent Carol R. Johnson, the rate decreased to 7.3 percent last year from 7.6 percent the previous year, according to the state report.

Boston schools released a lower dropout figure yesterday, based on methodology the city has used since the early 1980s. It said that 6.4 percent of its high school students quit last year, compared with 7.2 percent the previous year.

While both the state and city agree on the total number of dropouts last year, 1,308, they calculate the overall enrollment of high schools using different months. The state uses October, while Boston uses June.

“We continue to work every day to put safeguards in place to keep our most vulnerable students from dropping out,’’ Johnson said in a statement. “This data shows movement in the right direction.’’

Johnson said the district will not be satisfied until it reaches its target of a dropout rate of 3 percent or lower by 2014.