The State argues nonetheless that it is responsible only to provide the opportunity for a sound basic education and cannot be blamed if some students -- perhaps those who enter New York City schools after years of schooling in another country -- do not avail themselves of the opportunity it provides. As the trial court correctly observed, this opportunity must still "be placed within reach of all students," including those who "present with socioeconomic deficits" (187 Misc 2d at 63). This observation follows from the constitutional mandate to provide schools wherein all children may be educated, and is consistent with the official position of the Regents and Education Department, as set forth in the 655 Report for 1999, that "all children can learn given appropriate instructional, social, and health services." The evidence on why students drop out suggested mainly that the choice to drop out correlates with poor academic performance and, as noted in the 655 Report for 1999, racial minority status and concentrated poverty. The Report further indicated that "dropout rates serve as useful measures of schools' abilities to * * * motivate learning," supporting the common sense proposition that large dropout rates reflect problems with the schools as well as the students. The trial court properly considered both possibilities and declined to pin the blame solely on the deficits a "troubled child" brings to school ( see 187 Misc 2d at 63). There was certainly no proof that dropout rates are high because inordinate numbers of recent immigrants enter the ninth grade unable ever to graduate, though such students may take longer to graduate.[7] Moreover, as the trial court properly observed, "education is cumulative," and the State's hypothesis that poor completion rates stem from the educational deficits of teenage immigrant students does not jibe with the significant evidence that New York City schoolchildren begin to accumulate learning deficits well before high school (187 Misc 2d at 63). Test Results. The State's main answer to the proof of graduation and dropout rates in City schools consists of evidence that, in any event, test results are not bad -- and this is also where the Appellate Division concentrated its discussion of outputs (295 2 at 15-16). The State's reliance on some favorable standardized test results fails to take into account the full record on examination evidence. In particular, that evidence related to elementary school tests administered Statewide and intended to present results with reference to the content appropriate to their grade level: the Pupil Evaluation Program ("PEP"), which measures individual achievement in reading and mathematics, and the Program Evaluation Test ("PET"), which measures performance in other