Dropout Rate Rises Despite Extra Efforts : Education: Time and money have been spent in a plan to cut the dropout rate in half by 1991. Instead, more students than ever are leaving before graduation.

The number of dropouts in San Diego city schools continued to climb last year, sobering school administrators to the difficulty of making inroads despite a plethora of special programs and money spent on the problem during the past several years.

Schools Supt. Tom Payzant professed to find some consolation in the fact that numbers increased only slightly in the 1988-89 school year from previous figures.

The San Diego Unified School District said that, last year, 276 of every 1,000 students who had attended the ninth grade dropped out before graduation four years later. That is slightly above 1988-89 levels, when an estimated 269 out of 1,000 students dropped out. The latest figure represents a 7.4% jump from 1986-87, when the first statistics were kept and 257 students were estimated to drop out over a four-year period.

The new data shows the failure of the district’s goal of reducing the number of dropouts by half by 1991.

Of particular concern, the number of Latino dropouts increased from 39% to 41.7%, meaning that 417 of every 1,000 Latino ninth-graders did not graduate.

For African-Americans, the figures rose from 286 to 292 per 1,000. Numbers dropped for Indochinese, from 239 to 234 per 1,000; for whites, from 236 to 230 per 1,000; and for Asians, from 194 to 178 per 1,000. But they rose for Filipino students, from 141 to 150 per 1,000.

In addition, the number of students leaving school during the ninth grade grew, an additional item for worry among district educators.

Payzant warned that looming budget cuts for next year will mean fewer counselors and special teachers who can give one-on-one or small-group attention to potential dropouts--ratios that have been shown to be effective in persuading students who are not doing well in school to try harder or understand that someone cares about their future.

But he conceded that money alone is not the only solution, pointing out that demographics as well as attentive principals and teachers at individual schools can make a difference.

Hoover High School in the Mid-City area has cut its dropout rate by almost 50% since 1986-87--and 14.3% last year alone--through special counseling programs, cooperative efforts with community businesses and philanthropic organizations for tutoring and special instruction, and enforcement of attendance rules.

“They have been tenacious in making sure students are in school and have positive support when they are there,” Payzant said.

Mike Lorch, the new principal at Kearny High School this year, validated the importance of quickly identifying students who begin leaving school every day after one or two periods. Kearny had a 38% jump in the number of its dropouts last year, a trend Lorch attributed to the school’s lack of programs to enforce attendance and to work with at-risk students one-on-one.

“Kids leaving after lunch or not showing up for sixth-period classes often are taking the first steps toward dropping out,” Lorch said. “We’re identifying these kids now, we’re assigning adults to them one-on-one--trying to get to them earlier.

“I sure hope that having a more consistent policy will pay off for us this year” in terms of improved statistics, he said.

At San Diego High, more than 150 students from Mexico and Central America showed up at the school last year, largely as a result of amnesty programs allowing them to join a parent or parents already in the United States.

Not only did their increased numbers push the campus to capacity--eliminating space used for special drop-out programs--but also most of these 16- or 17-year-old immigrants came knowing no English and barely literate in their native Spanish or native Indian dialect.

The school’s inability to handle the influx of such students drove its dropout numbers up significantly, a 43% boost to 16% of the student body.

“We didn’t have the right programs for them,” principal Robert Amparan said. “We can teach English-as-a-second language kids, assuming they are near their grade-level in their own language . . . but here they’re trying not only to learn English but to get a formal education at the same time in their first language.”

The school this year set up a Newcomers School within the high school, where the immigrant students are given a special curriculum designed to jump-start their education and prepare them for alternative programs, such as a Community College diploma or work skills classes which the students can take while also holding down a job or meeting vital extended family responsibilities.

“The problems in our having the largest numbers of Hispanic students among (all) high schools is just part of the larger problems of immigration” that the region faces, Amparan said.

Payzant stressed that schools must do a better job of sharing information as to which programs work well and which work poorly.

The district is not “doing enough” to meet expectations of cutting dropout rates across all ethnic groups despite its relatively good ranking compared to other large American urban school districts, he said.

DROPOUT RATES

Districtwide Dropout Rates by Ethnic Group (Grades 9-12)

1986-87 1987-88 1988-89 1989-90 Hispanic 39.2% 40.1% 39.0% 41.7% African-American 27.9% 30.9% 28.6% 29.2% Indochinese 29.5% 26.0% 23.9% 23.4% White 22.6% 22.8% 23.6% 23.0% Asian 21.6% 14.3% 19.4% 17.8% Filipino 12.4% 12.3% 14.1% 15.0% Districtwide 25.7% 26.8% 26.9% 27.6%

Source: San Diego Unified School District