Progress Seen in Dropout Rate : Education: About 20% of the state’s 1990 class didn’t finish school. L.A. Unified’s figure was reduced to 40.9%. Honig warns that budget cuts threaten to wipe out gains.

California continues to make slow but steady progress in the battle to keep youngsters from dropping out of school, a state report released Tuesday showed, but state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig said pending budget cuts threaten to wipe out the hard-won gains.

About one in five youngsters--20.2%--of the Class of 1990 failed to complete high school, contrasted with 21.4% of the Class of 1989 and 25% for the Class of 1986, the first year the state Department of Education systematically collected dropout data.

In the giant Los Angeles Unified School District, the dropout rate for the Class of 1990 was 40.9%, down from 42.7% for the Class of 1986. While acknowledging that the district has made progress in the face of dramatic increases in the numbers of students more likely to drop out, including recent immigrants, Honig said the report showed that the district “has a lot to be concerned about. . . . I cannot explain why they are not doing better.”

Seven other California districts posted higher dropout rates for the Class of 1990--Delano Joint Union High, 42.5%, and Southern Kern Unified, 41.7%, both in Kern County; Coachella Valley Unified, 45.4%, and Desert Sands Unified, 46%, both in Riverside County; Silver Valley Unified in San Bernardino County, 46.2%; Cuyama Joint Unified in Santa Barbara County, 46.4%, and Santa Paula Union High School District in Ventura County, 47%.

A few other urban, heavily minority districts in the state fared worse than Los Angeles in terms of five-year trends. The Oakland Unified School District had a 58.4% increase its in dropout rate over the five-year period, going from 19.7% to 31.2%.

In Los Angeles County, several districts--including ABC (Artesia, Lakewood, Hawaiian Gardens and Cerritos), Arcadia, Culver City, Downey, El Segundo, Hacienda La Puente, Paramount, South Bay Union High, Walnut Valley and Whittier Union High--had substantial increases in their dropout rates over the five-year period. Many are smaller districts, and thus more dramatically affected by numerical changes. Most enjoyed low dropout rates in past years.

Many urban, heavily minority districts showed solid improvement, including Santa Ana Unified, which brought about a 33.3% decrease in its dropout rate--from 41.8% for the Class of ’86 to 27.9% for the Class of ‘90--with aggressive stay-in-school programs. San Francisco Unified made even more dramatic gains, slashing its dropout rate by 57.4%--from 30.5% to 13% over the same period.

The five-year gains were shared by all major ethnic groups, although blacks and Latinos continued to fare the worst overall, the report showed. For blacks, the rate fell from 35.7% to 32.8%; for Latinos, from 35.1% to 29.2%; for Anglos, from 20.2% to 14.4%, and for Asian-Americans, from 16.3% to 10.9%.

In the Los Angeles district, which is more than 86% minorities, the dropout rates for the Class of ’90 were 52% for blacks, 43.6% for Latinos and 31% for Anglos, according to James Fulton, manager of the state’s Educational Demographics Unit. Fulton said the rates for other major groups within the district were 24.2% for Filipinos, 43.0% for Pacific Islanders and 23.8% for other Asians.

James Catterall, an associate professor of education at UCLA and an expert on dropouts, said the report, while encouraging, would be more meaningful if it included data for every year, giving parents and educators a more accurate picture of what is happening within their districts. He also said the reports should include junior high students because many youngsters leave school before reaching 10th grade.

Fulton said the education department will be counting dropouts as early as seventh grade, beginning next year. He said the state measures the dropout rate by seeing how many youngsters who entered 10th grade left high school without a diploma or its equivalent by the end of the 12th grade. A school has 45 days to account for a student who has left its campus; if it cannot, the youth is counted as a dropout. Fulton said some adjustments in calculating the rates were made this year in an attempt to improve the report’s accuracy.

Honig attributed cases of substantial improvement to dropout prevention programs in some districts. He said he feared that many of these programs will be lost in the massive cuts in education funding proposed to help ward off a projected $14.3-billion state deficit.

In addition to the dropout-prevention programs, many districts are slashing into music, drama, industrial arts courses and other electives, eliminating the appeal school holds for youngsters not faring well in other subjects, Honig said.

“We’re deathly afraid that the cuts we’re talking about are going to hit these programs first. That’s bad for the kids and bad for the state as a whole,” Honig said, citing a recent report by two national education organizations showing that more than 80% of prison inmates are dropouts. Catterall’s 1987 study found the difference in lifetime earning power between dropouts and those who completed high school to be about $200,000 for women and $260,000 for men.

The Los Angeles district spends about $4.4 million a year of its own funds on dropout prevention programs at all grade levels, according to Ruth Rhodes of the district’s dropout prevention office.

“We know these are good programs. We have the evaluation data to know they are making a difference,” Rhodes said. Nonetheless, she said, at least some may be cut as the Board of Education struggles to close a gap of up to $391 million in its $4-billion 1991-92 budget.

Jonathan Blank, a teacher in a program for often-truant junior high school students, expects that many students will drop out if there are substantial cuts to the Junior High Assistance Project and the attendance counselors who refer students to it.

Instead of moving from teacher to teacher throughout the day, Blank’s students at Van Nuys Junior High School stay in his classroom for all their academic subjects. He also works closely with their parents.

“These students feel lost and don’t get the nurturing they need” in a regular junior high setting, Blank said. “If we can provide it here, we can reverse their truancies and keep them in school.”

High School Dropout Rates

Here are the dropout rates for high school districts in Los Angeles County. Rates listed are based on the number of students who entered 10th grade but had quit by the end of the 12th grade. Figures are expressed as percentages of student enrollment.

CLASS CLASS PERCENT DISTRICT OF 1986 OF 1990 CHANGE ABC Unified 12.4 14.8 +19.4 Alhambra City 14.6 10.7 -26.7 Antelope Valley Union 68.4 15.9 -76.8 Arcadia Unified 7.8 11.7 +50.0 Azusa Unified 53.5 4.8 -91.0 Baldwin Park Unified 19.7 18.4 -6.6 Bassett Unified 45.7 19.1 -58.2 Bellflower Unified 6.8 5.7 -16.2 Beverly Hills Unified 6.1 4.3 -29.5 Bonita Unified 18.2 9.0 -50.5 Burbank Unified 24.0 19.0 -20.8 Centinela Valley Union 28.7 29.3 +2.1 Charter Oak Unified 13.1 24.1 +84.0 Claremont Unified 9.5 4.6 -51.6 Compton Unified 27.6 28.7 +4.0 Covina-Valley Unified 12.6 8.3 -34.1 Culver City Unified 12.4 15.9 +28.2 Downey Unified 12.2 17.4 +42.6 Duarte Unified 59.7 31.5 -47.2 El Monte Union High 25.0 18.1 -27.6 El Rancho Unified 37.8 10.9 -71.2 El Segundo Unified 15.2 24.7 +62.5 Glendale Unified 12.9 2.4 -81.4 Glendora Unified 14.6 11.0 -24.7 Hacienda La Puente 11.5 23.5 +104.3 Inglewood Unified 31.5 26.7 -15.2 La Canada Unified 3.5 3.1 -11.4 Las Virgenes Unified 7.4 7.5 +1.4 Long Beach Unified 24.6 29.3 +19.1 Los Angeles Unified 42.7 40.9 -4.2 Lynwood Unified 41.3 31.8 -23.0 Monrovia Unified 14.6 15.5 +6.2 Montebello Unified 25.1 16.8 -33.1 Norwalk-La Mirada Unified 21.2 19.7 -7.1 Palos Verdes Unified 3.3 3.7 +12.1 Paramount Unified 17.1 32.4 +89.5 Pasadena Unified 20.5 19.1 -6.8 Pomona Unified 29.3 28.3 -3.4 Rowland Unified 19.2 13.3 -30.7 San Marino Unified 0.0 0.0 0.0 Santa Monica-Malibu 41.0 2.7 -93.4 South Bay Union High 6.8 8.0 +17.6 South Pasadena Unified 20.8 1.9 -90.9 Temple City Unified 13.4 6.5 -51.5 Torrance Unified 19.3 9.8 -49.2 Walnut Valley Unified 4.8 9.1 89.6 West Covina Unified 22.2 20.1 -9.5 Whittier Union High 19.8 30.2 52.5 William S. Hart Union High 22.3 15.4 -30.9 County Total 31.4 27.9 -11.1 State Total 25.0 20.2 -19.2

SOURCE: State Department of Education