Dropout Rate Up Slightly, Bennett Notes

Declaring that “we have to do better,” Education Secretary William J. Bennett reported Tuesday that college entrance scores held nearly steady last year and the high school dropout rate increased slightly.

Bennett, in releasing the department’s fourth annual “report card” on the nation’s schools, said that the statistics indicate “a little gain, a little slippage.”

In California, average student scores remained at 904 in 1985 and 1986 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, on a scale of 400 to 1,600. The dropout rate fell as the number of students graduating in the state increased from 63.2% to 65.8% from 1984 to 1985, the last year for which such figures are available.

California was fourth highest among the 16 states registering such dropout rate improvements but still ranked 39th nationally. The dropout rate is based on the number of seniors in school compared with the number of freshmen four years earlier. The state’s SAT scores rank ninth out of the 22 states that use the SAT.

Nationwide, test scores improved in 39 of the 50 states. American College Testing scores, used by 28 states, increased from 18.6 to 18.8, out of a possible 35. SAT scores remained at 906. The dropout rate increased in 33 states, raising the national rate to 29.4% from 29.2%.

The report card is a state-by-state comparison of test scores, dropout rates, teacher salaries, class sizes, spending and enrollment. Most categories have improve steadily since 1982.

National Education Assn. President Mary Hatwood Futrell dismissed the statistics, pointing out that “public education is a 13-year process, but the (statistics) use measures that essentially relate only to juniors and seniors.”

Other key indicators show that:

--The national student-teacher ratio was down slightly, to 17.9. California ranked last in that category, with a ratio of 23.1 students for every teacher.

--Expenditures per student were $3,449 nationally and $3,256 in California, which ranks 27th.

--Teacher salaries average $25,313 nationwide and $29,132 in California, the sixth highest.

--The part of school budgets that is federally funded fell from 6.8% to 6.5% from 1984 to 1985.