School Dropout Rate Plunges 82% From Last Year : Education: School officials credit academic programs for improvement, but skeptics say the numbers are implausible.

In one year, the dropout rate for the Compton Unified School District has plummeted from 37.3% to 6.7%, moving the much-maligned school system from the bottom to near the top of the class when it comes to keeping youths in school, according to state statistics released this week.

But some district employees and the state Department of Education questioned the legitimacy of the numbers. They said the one-year change was implausible and not supported by other district statistics.

Word of the dropout rate, however, was a welcome respite for a school system beset by financial and academic problems.

Compton school officials attributed the dramatic 82% improvement, by far the best one-year change in Los Angeles County, to better record-keeping and hard work on academic programs. The district found numerous students, for example, who were counted as dropouts, but who had transferred to other schools.

“I’m tremendously pleased,” school board President Kelvin Filer said. “This is due to the effort of our staff, teachers and the community.”

Filer said the improved dropout rate is a sign of better things to come.

“You can’t teach kids if you don’t have them in class,” he said.

The district’s dropout rate is now in the category of the Beverly Hills Unified School District and better than some nearby school systems that have won acclaim for dropout-prevention efforts.

Downey Unified, for example, has a well-publicized attendance enforcement program. On one occasion, officials almost jailed a parent for not getting a child to school. Yet Downey’s dropout rate is 14.5%.

Montebello Unified also attracted attention for innovative dropout-prevention programs. That district’s dropout rate is 10.5%, about 57% higher than Compton’s new rate.

Compton’s dropout rate is “suspicious,” said Richard Diaz, a statistics consultant for the state Department of Education.

“I’ve seen districts that suddenly report this tremendous dropout rate (reduction) but not this low,” Diaz said.

Other doubters include Margie Garrett, president of the Compton teachers union. “I don’t believe it’s real,” she said of the dropout rate. “We’re really trying to prevent dropouts, but I have not heard of a particular program throughout the district that would cause this.”

Compton administrators, who attribute much of the improvement to better record-keeping, said the older rate, among the worst in Southern California, probably exaggerated the number of dropouts.

Prior to last year, clerks and administrators were too quick to list students as dropouts, said Margaret Luckman, the district’s director of information systems.

Luckman said that schools report the name of every dropout in addition to providing a total number of dropouts. The schools and the district office then attempt to contact the student’s family to determine what happened to the student. Students officially become dropouts when they are missing from school for 45 days.

Students will sometimes return to class when administrators or teachers contact them, officials said.

But administrators also found that many listed dropouts had simply moved or enrolled in other schools, and Compton Unified had never fully accounted for this. Some students, once counted as dropouts, even turned out to be enrolled in other Compton schools. Other students turned up in neighboring school districts or schools in Mexico or in juvenile detention camp schools after an arrest.

“We tried to make a more concerted effort as a district to keep better records,” Luckman said.

School officials also said the improved rate may reflect a better, more interesting school program. In the last several years the district has focused on training teachers and administrators and updating curriculum, Assistant Supt. Lilly Nelson said.

Administrators could single out no districtwide dropout prevention program, but said that principals at all secondary schools were directed to create their own dropout prevention plans.

At Compton High, efforts to keep students in class have been buoyed by an influx of enthusiastic young teachers, Assistant Principal Lee Griffin said. Many of the young teachers are from Teach for America, a national nonprofit organization attempting to create a domestic Peace Corps of teachers for schools serving disadvantaged students.

“These young teachers were bright, enthusiastic and they believed in the students,” Griffin said. “They maybe make some mistakes but they believe learning is exciting.”

The school also received a state grant of more than $1 million to reshape and improve its programs.

Griffin said the recession also may have been a factor in the dropout rate. Many students, particularly young Latinos, leave school at 16 to find work. “But the jobs they could have walked out and gotten for minimum wage aren’t there anymore,” Griffin said.

Other administrators also credited a citywide gang truce declared in the wake of last year’s riots. The truce may have helped some students feel more secure crossing gang territory to get to school, they said.

But skeptics still question the dropout rate. After all, the news comes on the heels of a recently released county report that faulted nearly every aspect of the district’s management and academic programs.

Moreover, in past years, Compton’s dropout rate was comparable to that of surrounding school systems, such as Los Angeles Unified, Lynwood Unified and Long Beach Unified.

According to the statistics, Compton Unified, one of the largest school systems in the state, had only 64 dropouts last year. The total is absurdly low, said Ahrien Johnson, an attendance clerk who is also president of the union for non-teaching employees.

The low number also does not jibe with a related statistic called the “student attrition rate,” said Diaz.

The class of 1992, for example, graduated 701 students. That same class, in the 10th grade, had 1,295 students. The percentage difference is the attrition rate, which was 45.8% last year.

But dropout rates are not determined by tracking a single class through high school. Instead, dropout rates are calculated using the number of dropouts in a single year from grades nine, 10, 11 and 12.