It gets worse. A decade ago, recruiting in LA, I got to see the best AND the worst. It's truly frightening. One school (Bell HS--LAUSD) had 2500 freshman, but fewer than 600 seniors, not all of which were going to be able to graduate. It had been that way for years.
Yes, boys and girls, a 75 PERCENT DROPOUT RATE.
Frankly, the 24 percent figure is low, because the way the CA educator/bean counters figure it out, a kid can drop out of a regular high school but if they eventually get a GED or go to "alternative" or adult school, then they're not a dropout (sorta).
Yet for all of that, in California today, less than 70 percent of the 18-25 population holds a HS diploma. You can't blame all that on illegals, folks.