L.A. Confronts Dropout Crisis Among Latinos

As the Los Angeles Unified School District gears up for a new school year in September, it faces many old problems, with low achievement and a high dropout rate, particularly among Latinos, heading the list of challenges.

Although there are a few bright spots, educators and critics say the school district for the most part has had a poor record of educating Latinos.

Districtwide, 39% of all 10th through 12th graders drop out over the three years of high school. Although no ethnic breakdown on this figure is available, one-year dropout statistics show an enormous exodus by Latino students.

In the 1987-88 school year, 54% of the 19,381 high school students who dropped out were Latino. The one-year Latino dropout rate, calculated by dividing the number of Latino dropouts by the total number of Latino high school students, ranges from 7.5% at Huntington Park High School to 33.6% at Crenshaw High. Latino dropout rates generally are higher in South-Central Los Angeles than in the East and Southeast sections of the district.

“It is not an exaggeration to state that we have a crisis in this school district in terms of educating Latino students,” said Los Angeles Board of Education member Leticia Quezada. “It has to do with institutionalized racism. It is the result of hundreds of years of disservice.”

The education lost by the thousands of Latino youngsters who drop out should concern all of society, said Pete Martinez, who coordinates dropout prevention programs for the district.

“The public is going to pay double for services to recapture or sustain these individuals in our society,” he said. “They (dropouts) could end up not being productive members of our society, not in the mainstream and not making policy. They will be the have-nots.”

Black and Latino students fare the poorest in most measures of academic performance in the Los Angeles school district, the nation’s second largest. Low achievement affects Latinos in the largest numbers, however.

Nearly 60% of the district’s 595,000 pupils are Latino, according to a fall 1988 enrollment report. Blacks make up 16.7%, Anglos 15.8%, Asians 8.3% and American Indians 0.2%.

Failure to finish high school is the most serious problem among Latino youngsters, educators and other district observers say.

The one-year dropout rate for Latinos in the district is about 16%. That means that in the course of one year, one in six Latino students will drop out of high school.

Latino students in the Los Angeles district are slightly more likely to become dropouts than in the state as a whole. According to figures compiled by the California Department of Education, 1 in 8, or 12% of the Latino high school students statewide dropped out in the 1987-88 school year.

State education officials are in the process of calculating a three-year dropout rate, broken down by ethnic groups. The three-year rate will give a more complete picture of the problem, state officials say, by showing what proportion of the class that entered the 10th grade in 1985-86 had dropped out by the 12th grade in 1987-88.

Some critics of the Los Angeles district say that the dropout problem is more severe among Latinos than the figures show because hundreds of students drop out as early as the seventh grade.

Of those who stay in high school, statistics show that a disproportionately low number are enrolled in advanced mathematics and science courses needed for college.

Board members say that long-term solutions to low achievement are needed.

“One very simple thing we can do is have high expectations,” said school board member Roberta Weintraub. More teachers, she said, should emulate Garfield High School’s Jaime Escalante, whose success in teaching calculus to inner-city Latino students was showcased in last year’s critically praised film “Stand and Deliver.” Teachers like Escalante “have proven that when you have high expectations for kids, they deliver,” she said.

Other approaches that board members said should be taken are expanding bilingual education, strengthening instruction and counseling in the early and middle grades and increasing parent participation in schools.

Bilingual education, an approach to teaching non-English-speaking students that was introduced in the 1970s and remains controversial today, is one of the key changes needed to improve the dismal picture of Latino student achievement, several board members said. But a shortage of bilingual instructors has hampered efforts to expand bilingual programs.

The district has 145,650 Latino students who are not fluent in English but only about 1,400 fully credentialed Spanish bilingual instructors--a ratio of about 1 to 100. District officials hope that newly approved salary bonuses of $1,000 to $5,000 a year for bilingual teachers will enhance recruiting efforts.

Quezada said the expansion of the particular teaching methods pioneered at Eastman Avenue School in East Los Angeles is essential to raising the academic performance of Latino youngsters. “That is the most significant and most successful program we have,” she said.

Other board members say that other overall improvements would benefit Latino youngsters because many of the obstacles to higher achievement for Latinos are identical to those for other students.

“The same thing that will help low-achieving students in any group . . . is to keep them from getting behind in the first place, in kindergarten through third grades,” said board President Jackie Goldberg. She also recommended more team teaching and programs to help junior high students “bond” with their schools.

In addition, Goldberg said that “shared decision-making,” a new form of school governance that will be introduced in all 600 of the district’s schools this fall, will play an important role in boosting achievement. Initially, elected parent, community and teacher representatives working together on new school councils will make decisions on spending, discipline, scheduling and staff training. Eventually the councils will be allowed to develop new instructional programs to improve the quality of education at their schools, she said.

“I think shared decision-making holds out a lot of hope,” Goldberg said. The councils will be able to “tailor programs so that they make a difference” for all students.

SCHOOL YEAR STARTS

Classes start Sept. 12, at schools on the traditional academic calendar in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Here is useful information for new students:

Pre-registration--Students new to the district, those transferring from another district school and kindergartners are urged by school officials to register before the start of classes. Pre-registration will be held weekdays through Sept. 11 except on Admission Day (Sept. 1) and Labor Day (Sept. 4).

Kindergarten--Children must be 5 years old on or before Dec. 2 to enter kindergarten. A parent, guardian or other adult must accompany a child on the first day of school. Parents must supply proof of the child’s date of birth. This can be either a birth or baptism certificate, a passport, a health office verification document, an affidavit, or verification from the Bureau of Public Social Services.

Immunization--For kindergarten, parents must provide a record that children have been immunized against polio, mumps, rubeola (10-day or “hard” measles), rubella (German measles), diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough and supply results of a tuberculosis skin test. Other students new to the district must also meet these requirements, but children 7 years and older are exempt from whooping cough and mumps immunization requirements.

Information--If unsure which school a student should attend, call (213) 625-KIDS.

DROPOUT RATES BY ETHNIC GROUP

Here are the one-year dropout rates by ethnic group for the 49 regular high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The dropout rate shows the number of 10th, 11th and 12th graders who dropped out in the 1987-88 school year, the last period for which data is available. The California Department of Education calculates the figures based on information supplied by the district.

KEY

A Enrollment

B Students who dropped out

C Dropout rate

HIGHSCHOOL KEY ASIANS* LATINOS BLACKS ANGLOS Banning A 271 1630 776 245 B 33 257 68 39 C 12.18% 15.77% 8.76% 15.92% Bell A 31 2146 15 130 B 4 223 2 24 C 12.90% 10.39% 13.33% 18.46% Belmont A 657 2094 45 39 B 83 401 8 9 C 12.63% 19.15% 17.78% 23.08% Birmingham A 174 589 181 1227 B 19 98 27 97 C 10.92% 16.64% 14.92% 7.91% Canoga Park A 232 468 160 653 B 23 77 14 69 C 9.91% 16.45% 8.75% 10.57% Carson A 750 767 597 309 B 53 84 57 26 C 7.07% 10.95% 9.55% 8.41% Chatsworth A 285 450 293 1693 B 27 76 31 173 C 9.47% 16.89% 10.58% 10.22% Cleveland A 315 404 428 898 B 37 116 88 197 C 11.75% 28.71% 20.56% 21.94% Crenshaw A 1 125 1553 2 B 0 42 282 0 C .00% 33.60% 18.16% .00% Dorsey A 40 210 1794 4 B 3 57 303 1 C 7.50% 27.14% 16.89% 25.00% Eagle Rock A 392 596 22 355 B 21 94 5 25 C 5.36% 15.77% 22.73% 7.04% El Camino Real A 208 298 223 1357 B 7 30 16 57 C 3.37% 10.07% 7.17% 4.20% Fairfax A 446 584 599 761 B 50 131 121 125 C 11.21% 22.43% 20.20% 16.43% Francis Poly A 283 1461 145 534 B 26 331 24 92 C 9.19% 22.66% 16.55% 17.23% Franklin A 510 2023 29 213 B 16 362 6 42 C 3.14% 17.89% 20.69% 19.72% Fremont A 8 1469 885 4 B 2 419 362 0 C 25% 28.52% 40.90% .00% Gardena A 600 645 935 197 B 43 85 147 41 C 7.17% 13.18% 15.72% 20.81% Garfield A 52 3396 7 47 B 1 363 0 5 C 1.92% 10.69% .00% 10.64% Granada Hills A 360 421 308 1260 B 27 99 47 113 C 7.5% 23.52% 15.26% 8.97% Grant A 372 914 132 1313 B 30 189 14 128 C 8.06% 20.68% 10.61% 9.75% Hamilton A 136 402 733 394 B 15 76 119 49 C 11.03% 18.91% 16.23% 12.44% Hollywood A 230 1135 189 612 B 26 210 36 92 C 11.30% 18.50% 19.05% 15.03% Huntington Park A 25 2414 19 42 B 2 182 4 6 C 8.00% 7.54% 21.05% 14.29% Jefferson A 24 2119 485 6 B 3 529 194 3 C 12.50% 24.96% 40.00% 50.00% Jordan A 7 671 497 6 B 3 158 163 1 C 42.86% 23.55% 32.80% 16.67% Kennedy A 351 877 283 917 B 23 124 43 82 C 6.55% 14.14% 15.19% 8.94% Lincoln A 445 1505 10 10 B 32 184 4 2 C 7.19% 12.23% 40.00% 20.00% Locke A 21 289 951 1 B 5 79 274 0 C 23.81% 27.34% 28.81% .00% Los Angeles A 529 1599 861 36 B 83 375 247 8 C 15.69% 23.45% 28.69% 22.22% Manual Arts A 13 1294 1053 2 B 5 410 543 2 C 38.46% 31.68% 51.57% 100% Marshall A 983 1575 90 477 B 77 280 10 62 C 7.83% 17.78% 11.11% 13.00% Monroe A 259 1011 470 905 B 33 314 116 185 C 12.74% 31.06% 24.68% 20.44% Narbonne A 398 747 280 744 B 16 93 14 46 C 4.02% 12.45% 5.00% 6.18% North Hollywood A 215 1220 182 958 B 18 233 24 138 C 8.37% 19.10% 13.19% 14.41% Palisades A 125 161 539 821 B 7 16 53 66 C 5.60% 9.94% 9.83% 8.04% Reseda A 136 462 367 811 B 10 64 47 87 C 7.35% 13.85% 12.81% 10.73% Roosevelt A 50 3729 27 27 B 4 778 9 9 C 8.00% 20.86% 33.33% 33.33% San Fernando A 31 2478 222 159 B 3 424 33 26 C 9.68% 17.11% 14.86% 16.35% San Pedro A 159 963 224 1153 B 9 100 24 59 C 5.66% 10.38% 10.71% 5.12% South Gate A 26 1934 30 130 B 3 356 7 25 C 11.54% 18.41% 23.33% 19.23% Sylmar A 50 1155 149 513 B 6 221 29 77 C 12.00% 19.13% 19.46% 15.01% Taft A 174 453 318 1298 B 8 43 41 90 C 4.60% 9.49% 12.89% 6.93% University A 374 464 427 1135 B 35 116 95 145 C 9.36% 25.00% 22.25% 12.78% Van Nuys A 460 822 208 793 B 33 120 18 76 C 7.17% 14.60% 8.65% 9.58% Venice A 278 952 213 802 B 12 147 35 60 C 4.32% 15.44% 16.43% 7.48% Verdugo Hills A 357 598 20 759 B 30 180 3 149 C 8.40% 30.10% 15.00% 19.63% Washington A 9 286 2180 1 B 3 51 472 1 C 33.33% 17.83% 21.65% 100% Westchester A 76 104 841 435 B 0 5 20 8 C 0.00% 4.81% 2.38% 1.84% Wilson A 281 2101 49 58 B 22 473 9 12 C 7.83% 22.51% 18.37% 20.69%

* Includes Filipinos and Pacific Islanders

Back to School

Soaring Latino Enrollment

In the past 19 years, Latino students have risen from 116,000 (18.6%) to 348,000 (59%) in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Because of demographic changes and opposition to court-mandated busing, Anglo students in the district have dropped form nearly 352,000 (56%) to 93,000 (15.8%)

*American Indian/Alaskan natives made up 0.2% of 1988 student population.

*Includes Filipinos and Pacific Islanders.