Study Shows 44% Fail to Finish High School

If the Los Angeles school system were a firm that depended on repeat customers, it would probably be out of business.

That’s because more than 44% of the students who enrolled as sophomores in 1981 had left by June of 1984, a district study released Monday showed. In 10 of the 49 city high schools, however, more than half of the students left during the high school years.

The study reported on what the district calls its “attrition” rate, which simply tallied the drop in enrollment for the class of 1984. District officials said Monday they do not know how many of those students actually “dropped out.”

“We don’t have a process to report actual dropouts or even a definition of a dropout,” said Robert Martin, assistant superintendent who headed the study group, describing this as his biggest surprise during the yearlong study. “All we know is that a lot of students are leaving.”

However, Martin said he views the attrition rate as a close approximation to the dropout rate. For one thing, the attrition rate would count students who leave school for any reason--moving out of the district, going to private schools or dropping out. But, he noted, there are at least as many families moving into the district as are moving out, and recent studies have shown more private school students returning to the district.

School Board President John Greenwood also said Monday that the study did not count any student who quit before 10th grade.

“My gut reaction is that the dropout rate is probably higher than the attrition rate. And that’s really scary,” Greenwood said.

Officials also said the number of students quitting high school in Los Angeles appears to be increasing. The senior classes of 1982 and 1983 had lost about 41% of their students during the years between 10th and 12th grade. Ten years ago, the high school leaving rate was 24%, the district said.

Looking for Causes

Although the report concentrated on high schools, board members said in a discussion that the causes of the high dropout rate probably lie in the early grades. In interviewing 370 former students for the report, most cited “poor grades” and “dislike of school” as their reasons for leaving.

“Everybody agrees that low grades are a primary indicator, and we have got to start paying attention to failure early in school,” board member Jackie Goldberg said.

She also said that research studies have found that “the size of school is a critical issue” in predicting the dropout rate, adding that Los Angeles has some of the nation’s largest elementary and junior high schools.

The study also recommended that city high schools stop citing “over age” as a reason for students dropping out, in part because some students and school officials may come to believe that a student must be under a certain age to stay in high school.

Mistaken View

“Somehow the perception has grown that at age 18 you don’t go to high school anymore. I have seen over and over again that parents, youngsters and even administrators take that view,” Goldberg said.

Principals at several high schools with very high attrition rates cited transient populations and the students’ need to work as primary causes.

“We’re a very transient area, a port of of entry for Hispanics and Asians,” said Francis Nakano, principal at Jefferson High in South-Central Los Angeles, which loses more than 63% of its students between 10th and 12th grades. “We also have some who just make the transition to 10th grade. They come here barely able to read.”

On Feb. 25, the school board will vote on a proposed $1-million project to see if adding more counselors and psychologists can reduce the dropout rate at 12 high schools.

Attrition Rate by High School Here is how high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District rank by attrition rate--which reflects the number of students who leave between 10th and 12th grades.

School % of Students Leaving Belmont 67.5 Jefferson 63.5 Los Angeles 63.0 Fremont 61.2 San Fernando 56.4 Manual Arts 56.1 Roosevelt 55.6 Bell 53.4 Jordan 51.1 South Gate 50.1 Franklin 49.9 Locke 49.5 Washington 49.1 Lincoln 48.2 Wilson 48.0 Francis Poly 47.8 Banning 46.6 Cleveland 45.8 Sylmar 45.5 Narbonne 44.2 Dorsey 43.7 Reseda 43.2 Garfield 41.2 Hollywood 40.5 Venice 40.5 Verdugo Hills 40.3 Crenshaw 40.2 Van Nuys 39.3 Huntington Park 38.3 San Pedro 37.8 Grant 37.4 North Hollywood 37.3 Carson 36.5 Canoga Park 35.9 Monroe 33.5 Marshall 33.0 Chatsworth 31.5 Gardena 31.4 Eagle Rock 31.2 Hamilton 30.9 Taft 30.8 Westchester 29.5 El Camino 28.4 Granada Hills 28.0 Kennedy 25.1 Birmingham 24.8 Fairfax 22.3 Palisades 18.6 University 17.0