State Dropout Rate Declined to 16.6% in ’92

Bringing some good news to the state’s embattled public education system, a state Department of Education report shows another decline in California’s high school dropout rate last year.

The three-year dropout rate for the Class of ’92 was 16.6%, marking an almost 34% reduction since 1986, the first year data was collected on the number of students who entered 10th grade but left school before graduating. The dropout rate for the Class of ’91 was 18.2%.

The decline has continued almost uninterrupted toward the goal of former state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, who sought to push the dropout rate below 10% by the turn of the century.

“It’s not good enough, but it sure is better,” William D. Dawson, acting state superintendent of public instruction, said of the data, published Monday.

“There is no single silver bullet, but there are 1,000 individual things that have a cumulative effect, and we’re seeing them pay off,” Dawson said.

School officials in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys--where rates generally stayed the same or dipped slightly--said they have worked hard to provide programs designed to keep youngsters identified as potential dropouts from leaving school.

“More and more schools are looking at how can we make school more relevant to students so that it seems more reasonable to stay attached to it,” said Louise Robertson, coordinator of special programs for the William S. Hart Union High School District in Santa Clarita. “It’s imperative that we keep kids in school because they’re going to need it.”

Dawson cited special state funding for dropout prevention programs at some schools, changes in curricula and teaching, partnerships with business, and a variety of intensified, more sophisticated approaches to identifying and working with students at risk of failing.

All the state’s major ethnic groups showed improvements in their dropout rates, although those for African-Americans and Latinos remained considerably above the state average, and their gains were not as strong as those for Anglos and Asians. The rate for African-Americans slid to 26.4% for 1992, a decline of 26.1% since 1986; for Latinos, it dropped to 24.6%, a 29.9% decline. The 1992 dropout rates for the other major groups were 10.8% for Anglos (down 46.5%) and 9.2% for Asians (down 43.6%).

The continuing improvement statewide provided some good news for California’s public schools, which have been struggling with exploding enrollments and recession-induced budget cuts for several years and which face the potential financial impact of the voucher initiative on the November ballot. Under that initiative, parents could receive vouchers from the funds earmarked for public schools and use the money to send their children to private or parochial campuses.

Dawson said he hoped that voters would look upon the reduced dropout rate, along with other indicators of school improvement such as increased numbers of students completing college-entrance courses and higher test scores, as evidence that the public schools are turning themselves around.

“This doesn’t mean everything is rosy, but it does show public school teachers and administrators are rising to the challenge . . . despite having the same level of funding for three years and despite having inflation chomp away at those dollars,” Dawson said.

Locally, most districts showed strong progress in keeping youngsters in school, including the struggling 640,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District. While the nation’s second-largest district has made some progress, its dropout rate of 36.9% keeps it well above the state average. Its rate also improved less significantly--13.6% over the seven-year period--than the decline statewide.

At Cleveland High School in Reseda, the rate was sliced in half from 55.3% in 1989 to 28.1% last year. Principal Ida Mae Windham attributed the sharp decline to a “little bit of everything,” including some changes in the way dropout data is collected, increased parental involvement and programs aimed at younger students.

One program targets ninth-graders, grouping a select number in interdisciplinary studies that allow the students to work closely with the same team of teachers all the way through graduation. The retention rate of youths in the program is higher than the school as a whole, Windham said.

“Those are the crucial years,” Windham said of the program’s emphasis on dealing with incoming students. “The transition from the middle school to senior high school for many youngsters is traumatic.”

Officials in the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys also credit alternative educational programs with helping to bring down the number of teen-agers who leave school.

The Antelope Valley Union High School District--where the dropout rate fell in a year from 23.4% to 11.1%--has instituted “alternative learning centers” that incorporate specialized studies, work with computers, vocational training and schedules allowing students to learn at their own pace to encourage youths to stay in school.

“Those paid off, is what it looks like to me,” said Steve Landaker, the school board president. “We do a lot of creative things to make sure the kids are in school.”

However, those programs impose large costs on the financially troubled district and are in danger of being revamped or scaled back, Landaker warned.

The average dropout rate for all school districts in Los Angeles County was 23.7%, a decline of 24.5% from 1986 to 1992.

The 11,000-student Azusa Unified School District--provides another example of how concerted efforts can pay off. Sixty-eight percent of the district’s students are Latino and 20% of them are on welfare, both groups with historically high dropout rates. Yet Azusa whittled its dropout rate to 3.7% last year.

Kathleen Miller, administrative assistant to the district’s superintendent, said the school board and district staff have made keeping students in school a top priority. The efforts begin in elementary school with incentives for good attendance and programs to build youngsters’ self-esteem, then continue with methods calculated to ensure students’ success.

Ninth-graders are grouped in ways to enable a teacher to stay with them throughout their school day, enhancing chances for the teacher to get to know each student better. School counselors make home visits to the families of youngsters who start skipping classes, and a program for pregnant students and those with newborns helps remove the obstacles to a teen-age mother’s staying in school.

The district also has a GOAL program--Greater Opportunities for Achievement through Learning--aimed at ninth-graders who are falling behind and in danger of dropping out. Grouped in classes of about 20, they get intensive tutoring and have a special computer lab to help them catch up academically.

The programs are paid for out of regular school district funds except for GOAL, which began with the help of giant computer firm IBM, Miller said.

“All of these programs are paying off--there is no doubt about it,” Miller said.

In Orange County, 12% of high school students dropped out before last year’s graduation, compared to 19.9% in 1986. The county’s schools consistently have shown a better dropout picture than those statewide. Santa Ana Unified stood out for making a major improvement, boasting a 61.2% reduction in its dropout rate since 1986.

In the fast-growing school systems of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, strong gains also were registered. For the seven-year period, dropouts declined by 39.3% (to 16.4% for the Class of ‘92) in Riverside County schools and by 44.1% (to 17.4%) in San Bernardino County. Schools in San Diego and Imperial counties sliced their dropout rates by more than half--by 56.2% (to 10.9%) for San Diego and by 54.4% (to 9.8%) for Imperial.

Aware that significant numbers of youths drop out even before reaching high school, the state has begun asking schools to report dropout data for grades 7, 8 and 9; however, that data will not be made public until middle and junior high schools become more familiar with the fairly complicated reporting techniques, state officials said.

Because of a production error, an incomplete version of this story appeared in some editions Tuesday.