California’s High School Dropout Rate Falls to 20.4% : Education: The decline continues a trend. School chief Honig credits campuses that ‘got organized’ to combat the problem.

Although California continued to chip away at its troubling high school dropout rate last year, one in five students from the class of 1989 failed to graduate, a state Department of Education report showed Monday.

Yet schools chief Bill Honig noted the three-year, 20.4% dropout rate for last year’s graduating class shows steady progress from the 24.9% rate for the class of 1986 and the 22.1% for the class of 1988.

The statewide average was improved largely by schools that “got organized” to do something about their dropout problems, Honig said. He added that many schools with no stay-in-school programs saw their rates climb by 10% or more.

Citing a state-funded project in about 200 high schools and other intensive efforts to keep youngsters in school, Honig said he is confident the state can reach its goal of bringing the dropout rate to no more than 10% by the end of the decade.

“We’re pretty happy,” Honig said at El Monte High School, where he released this year’s report in tribute to the school’s success in bringing down a 27.5% dropout rate while its students, nearly 40% of whom are not native English-speakers, increased their scores on the California Assessment Program tests.

Using funds provided by a special state program begun about four years ago, El Monte hired a dropout-prevention counselor to work intensively with students deemed on the verge of quitting school. Through this and other measures, the school shaved the rate to 25.6% for the class of 1989, bringing it to within a few points of the El Monte Union High School District’s average, 22.7%

The state measures the dropout rate by seeing how many youngsters who entered the 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.

Dropout expert James Catterall of UCLA’s Graduate School of Education said the new numbers are encouraging. But he cautioned that they do not give a complete picture since they do not include the junior high school level, where there has been evidence of an increasing dropout problem.

In addition, the inevitable variation in the ways individual schools report their statistics to the state and the fact that the percentages of students earning diplomas each year has remained about the same “makes this a puzzle . . . the (decline in dropout rates between 1988 and 1989) could be just a wobble, or it could be a good sign,” Catterall said.

In Los Angeles County, where the dropout rate overall decreased from 31.8% in 1986 to 26.4% last year, there were some big trouble spots. In the Lynwood Unified School District, more than half of the class of 1989--54.5%--quit before graduation. That gives the 14,000-student district the second-highest dropout rate in California.

The district has undergone dramatic changes in its student population, and in the last year or so has suffered from some turmoil in its administration. Its new superintendent could not be reached for comment on the dropout statistics Monday.

In the Compton Unified School District, where officials recently started an anti-dropout program that targets children as young as 5 years old, the rate climbed to 39.7% for the class of 1989. It was 27.6% for the class of 1986.

Other schools or districts posting increases included Alhambra City High School, up from 14.6% in 1986 to 20.3% last year, and the Glendale Unified School District, up from 12.9% in 1986 to 19.1% last year.

By contrast, districts such as Oxnard Union High School in Ventura County used state funds and a full-court press by school and community officials to turn around a 30.1% dropout rate for the class of 1986, cutting it to 7.8% for the class of 1989.

Improvements were posted by the financially strapped and overcrowded Los Angeles Unified School District and by several smaller Los Angeles County districts.

At Belmont High School near downtown Los Angeles, for example, a multifaceted program brought the dropout rate from 44.8% in 1988 to 27.7% in 1989. Belmont Principal Marta L. Bin, whose 4,500 students represent 80 nationalities and speak 26 languages, said progress came “by strengthening the liaison between the school and the home.”

“We’ve made many home telephone calls and visits,” said Bin, adding Belmont has its own dropout counselor, an after-school tutoring program and special elective classes.

Some other schools or districts slid badly in their efforts to see that students finish high school. Among them was the Oakland Unified School District, where the state has stepped in to try to help solve problems ranging from poor student achievement to allegations of corruption among administrators. The dropout rate climbed from 19.7% in 1986 to 28.4% last year.

L.A. COUNTY 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 OF CLASS PERCENT DISTRICT OF 1986 OF 1989 CHANGE ABC Unified 12.4 9.8 -21.0 Alhambra City 14.6 20.3 +39.0 Antelope Valley Union 68.4 24.5 -64.2 Arcadia Unified 7.8 6.0 -23.1 Azusa Unified 53.5 31.8 -40.6 Baldwin Park Unified 19.7 14.3 -27.4 Bassett Unified 45.7 27.6 -39.6 Bellflower Unified 6.8 14.6 +114.7 Beverly Hills Unified 6.1 8.9 +45.9 Bonita Unified 18.2 15.0 -17.6 Burbank Unified 24.0 23.0 -4.2 Centinela Valley Union 28.7 29.1 +1.4 Charter Oak Unified 13.1 17.6 +34.4 Claremont Unified 9.5 5.6 -41.1 Compton Unified 27.6 39.7 +43.8 Covina Valley Unified 12.6 9.0 +28.6 Culver City Unified 12.4 9.7 -21.8 Downey Unified 12.2 16.1 +32.0 Duarte Unified 59.7 7.4 -87.6 El Monte Unified 25.0 22.7 -9.2 El Rancho Unified 37.8 11.7 -69.1 El Segundo Unified 15.2 10.2 -32.9 Glendale Unified 12.9 19.1 +48.1 Glendora Unified 14.6 14.7 +0.7 Hacienda La Puente Unified 11.5 17.0 +47.8 Inglewood Unified 31.5 11.0 -65.1 La Canada Unified 3.5 2.9 -17.1 Las Virgenes Unified 7.4 8.2 +10.8 Long Beach Unified 24.6 26.9 +9.4 Los Angeles Unified 42.7 34.9 -18.3 Lynwood Unified 41.3 54.5 +32.0 Monrovia Unified 14.6 13 2 -9.6 Montebello Unified 25.1 12.7 -49.4 Norwalk-La Mirada Unified 21.2 24.3 +14.6 Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified 3.3 1.7 -48.5 Paramount Unified 17.1 22.5 +31.6 Pasadena Unified 20.5 21.7 +5.9 Pomona Unified 29.3 21.1 -28.0 Rowland Unified 19.2 18.5 -3.7 San Marino Unified .0 1.7 0 Santa Monica-Malibu Unified 41.0 19.6 -52.2 South Bay Union 6.8 5.4 -20.6 South Pasadena Unified 20.8 2.4 -88.5 Temple City Unified 13.4 8.1 -39.6 Torrance Unified 19.3 6.3 -67.4 Walnut Valley Unified 4.8 5.1 +6.3 West Covina Unified 22.8 26.1 +17.6 Whittier Union 19.8 24.4 +23.2 William S. Hart Union 22.3 13.2 -40.8 Los Angeles Total 31.8 26.4 -17.0 State Total 24.9 20.4 -18.1

SOURCE: State Dept. of Education