Dropping Out

An alarming number of students who start high school in Los Angeles fail to graduate. In stark fact, half the students who began in 1981 at 10 of Los Angeles’ 49 high schools eventually left without diplomas.

The trend is even more alarming, if possible. A decade ago 24% of those who started high school didn’t finish. The figure for the class of 1984 is 44%.

So many paths lead students away from school that it is hard to know where to start to stem the tide. Poverty. Drugs. Home life. Motivation. Teen-age pregnancy. Race. Huge schools. Indifferent teachers. Boredom. But parents, students and employers should demand that the schools begin somewhere.

For openers, schools need to know more about the number and causes of dropouts. Last yearGov. George Deukmejian vetoed a bill requiring school districts to collect data on dropouts. Assemblywoman Gloria Molina (D-Los Angeles) has re-introduced that bill (AB 472). Molina and Assemblyman Bill Leonard (R-Redlands) are also sponsoring meetings in Sacramento and the Los Angeles area in a bipartisan search for other ways to stem the tide.

Merely collecting numbers would not solve the problem, but it would help pinpoint schools that need help, and would focus much-needed attention on the problem. Other questions also need answers:

--Should school districts receive full payment on the daily-attendance formula as well as maintain their accreditation if indeed their students are dropping out?

--Are truancy laws being enforced by all school districts, or are they ignored by many students and their parents?

--Are schools monitoring students with work permits, as they are supposed to do, to ensure that they aren’t working when they should be doing homework?

--Is attention paid to potential dropouts early enough in their schooling? After all, if a student isn’t reading in the fourth or fifth grade, he may fight failure the rest of his life.

Industry can play a role as well. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Los Angeles, for example, has given Roosevelt High School and Garfield High School in East Los Angeles $50,000 each to try to cut the dropout rates. The programs involve identifying potential dropouts at the junior-high level, checking on their attendance and tutoring them when they have problems. The students may be bright but unmotivated; the program is designed to turn them on to school.

Garfield Principal Henry Gradillas says that of 200 ninth-graders selected last spring for the special program, 20 didn’t even show up in the fall; 20 others elected not to participate. Of those who did enroll, none have had attendance problems. They are still in school. In fact, Gradillas says, 40 of them had perfect one-month attendance records.

The dropout problem should be one of the state’s top education priorities. The Legislature and the governor have started a much-needed school-reform program. They have put money behind it. There can be no more important remaining goal than making sure that all students, not just the brightest and most successful, have a chance to stay in school to benefit from the reforms.