Sacramento City Unified released student dropout rates for three small district high schools created to save at-risk students. With rates exceeding 33 percent, Associate Superintendent Mary Shelton calls the results “sobering.” This should come as no surprise. Dropout rates are soaring statewide as performance plunges.

The three Sacramento schools were launched five years ago, known as “e21,” to help students struggling in regular public schools. These schools have been largely supported by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

On Aug. 7, Bill and Melinda Gates appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to address the dropout crisis. They acknowledged it is far more than an “at-risk” or “low-income” student problem.

“Millions of kids are dropping out,” said Bill Gates.

This has been a rising problem in schools all across the nation—especially in California where one out of four high school students drop out.

“This is affecting all schools,” said Melinda Gates. “All these kids are dropping out, and the ones making it through are not even prepared for college.”

A recent book from the Pacific Research Institute, “Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice,” found that at more than one in 10 affluent, middle-class public schools in California, less than half of the students in at least one grade level are proficient in English or math on the California Standards Test. Less than one-third of those schools’ students are poor, few students are English language learners or have disabilities, parents are well educated, and most, if not all, of their teachers are certified. Those schools are in neighborhoods where median home prices approach, and even exceed, $1 million.

For former NBA All-Star Kevin Johnson, founder of the independent charter school district St. Hope Public Schools in Sacramento, reform is a moral issue. “Education is supposed to be the great equalizer for us all,” he said.

Options such as charter schools and publicly-funded scholarships help ensure students can attend the schools that best meet their needs. Such schools have more freedom to innovate and powerful incentives to spend education dollars wisely. Most important, letting parents pick the schools they believe are best for their children works. Consider Florida. It was on a dropout trajectory similar to California’s until a decade ago when it adopted tough accountability measures, and gave students the right of exit from schools that weren’t working for them.

Today, inner-city Florida fourth-graders score two points higher in reading than all California’s fourth-graders on the National Assessment of Education Progress. The average Florida Hispanic fourth-grade reading score – conducted in English – is now higher than the overall scores of all fourth-graders in 15 states, including California. African-American fourth-graders in Florida score higher in reading than all Louisiana and Mississippi fourth-graders, a single scale score point now separates them from all California fourth-graders.

Real accountability and the right of exit to better schools are both lacking in California—but hopefully not for long if Sacramento City Unified is any indication.

This fall, Sacramento City Unified will have seven small at-risk high schools. The district’s efforts are an important step in California toward giving all students, whether at-risk or affluent, the freedom to choose the school that fits them best.

Vicki E. Murray, Ph.D. is Education Senior Policy Fellow at the Pacific Research Institute. Evelyn Stacey is a PRI Education Studies Summer Fellow.