Districts Criticize U.S. Dropout Figures : Education: Officials doubt accuracy of study that says the Santa Ana schools have the nation’s highest rate while those in Irvine have the lowest.

Orange County cities reflect both the best and the worst in the nation in the number of high school dropouts, according to a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Education.

The department’s fourth annual report to Congress shows that 36.7% of Santa Ana teen-agers 16 to 19 were high school dropouts in 1991, more than three times the national average. In nearby Irvine, only 2.1% of the 16- to 19-year-olds had dropped out of school, the lowest dropout rate in the nation.

Officials in the Santa Ana and Irvine school districts criticized the accuracy of the dropout numbers, which were calculated by the National Center for Education Statistics, based on the portion of students in that age group who had not completed high school and were not enrolled at the time of the study.

Those numbers included teen-agers who moved to Santa Ana and never intended to enroll in school, said Rudy Castruita, superintendent of the Santa Ana Unified School District. Since Santa Ana attracts so many Mexican immigrants looking for work, the federal study overcounts the schools’ dropouts, he said.

Schools in California count a student as a dropout when he or she leaves school before graduating and no request to forward the student’s academic records is received.

Castruita said the national dropout report labeling Santa Ana the highest was shocking in light of the district’s recent improvements in keeping students in school.

“If you take a look at our state statistics, we had a 1986 dropout rate of 41.8%,” Castruita said. “But we’ve reduced that dropout rate to a 24.6% (in 1991), which is one of the best reductions in the state of California.”

The same state dropout figures, released in April, show Irvine had a dropout rate of 5.6%.

The U.S. Department of Education said its study of dropout rates revealed a mixture of good and bad news for the country, showing high school dropout rates are declining for blacks and whites but not for Latinos.

The report measures the dropout rate in three ways. Officials track those who leave high school each year; the proportion of the population that has not completed high school, regardless of when the people dropped out; and a single group of students over a period of time.

Nationally, the percentage of students 15 through 24 years old in grades 10 through 12 who quit in a single year without completing high school declined about 34%, from a 6.1% rate in 1980 to 4% in 1991.

Latino dropout rates have remained high during the past 20 years, although the dropout rates for whites and blacks declined between 1980 and 1991.