Dropout Rate Falls 54% at S.D. County Schools : Education: The number of students reported quitting high school remains below the state and national averages for the sixth straight year.

Tom Williams knows how to keep kids in school.

In the last five years alone, the director of alternative programs for the Sweetwater Union High School District has helped start up 18 outreach programs that have made sense to poor academic performers who once became students missing in action.

The result: some teen-agers who once dropped out of school for full-time fast-food jobs are trickling back to the classroom.

On Thursday, the efforts of Williams and other educators were reflected in a report showing that the dropout rate among San Diego county high school districts had fallen by 54.2% and remained below both the state and national averages.

San Diego County’s dropout rate stood at 11.4% for the year 1991, down from 24.9% five years ago. For the sixth straight year, the county’s dropout rate was lower than the state average, which was 18.2%, according to statistics released by the County Office of Education.

County Superintendent of Schools Harry Weinberg called the new numbers a battle won in the war against student dropouts.

“It’s excellent news,” he said. “It shows we’re moving in the right direction. It’s just good news on every front you can imagine.”

The statewide figures also are moving in the right direction.

Educators said the newest statewide dropout average represents the first time that California’s dropout rate has fallen below 20% since the state Department of Education began keeping data on students leaving high school without graduating.

Student dropout rates for individual counties varied widely throughout California, from Napa County’s low of 3.6% to Los Angeles County’s 26.2%, a 5% drop from the 1986 figure but still higher than the state average.

Orange County’s 15.5% dropout rate was below the state average and represented a 22.1% decline since the 19.9% tallied five years ago. Other county rates were: Riverside County, 16.8%; San Bernardino County, 19.3% and Ventura County, 10.7%, statistics showed.

Efforts to keep students in school paid off in gains for all of California’s biggest ethnic groups, although the rates continued to vary from group to group. The dropout rate for Asians declined from 16.3% in 1986 to 10.3%, for blacks it dropped from 35.7% to 29.4%, and for Latinos it dipped from 35.1% to 27.2%. The dropout rate for the state’s white students slid from 20.2% to 12%.

In the San Diego Unified School District, the nation’s eighth-largest, the student dropout rate has fallen 60.7% since 1986, from 32.1% to 12.6%, the report showed.

And, although 14 of 16 local school districts with high schools had 1991 dropout rates below the state average, the news was not good in every classroom.

Vista and San Marcos school districts saw their dropout rates rise by 53% and 33% respectively. And, although their dropout rates fell 19.8% and 26.6% respectively over the last five years, both Escondido and Oceanside school districts remained above the state average with 1991 dropout rates of 19.5% and 21.8%, the report showed.

Still, Weinberg’s spirits were not dampened by any individual showing.

“It’s a boost for teachers who have tried very hard to stop students from falling through the cracks,” he said. “It’s telling us that our efforts are not in vain. And it’s good for the economy.”

Many dropouts end up going to prison, he said. And, although it costs an average of $30,000 each year to house a prison inmate, it costs only $4,000 to $5,000 to keep a child in school, Weinberg said.

“Not only that, keeping kids in school is good for the U.S. Treasury and economy,” he said. “Over their careers, it’s been shown that high school graduates earn $200,000 more than people who don’t graduate.”

Some school districts, however, were taking the newest county study with a grain of academic salt.

In Vista, for example, dropout rates rose 53% during the five-year span, from 6.6% to 10.1%, according to the study.

School Supt. Rene Townsend had an answer for that one.

“Statistics can be misleading,,” she said. “And in this case they truly are.”

Because of a reporting error in 1986, the Vista School District was credited with a 6.1% dropout rate when, in fact, the numbers were actually much higher, Townsend said. The principal at the district’s then single high school reported the dropout rate for seniors only--not grades 10 through 12--setting the stage for some serious misunderstandings in years to come, she said.

“The numbers looked great on paper back then, but they just weren’t accurate,” Townsend said. “But, if you have bad baseline data and you keep comparing to it with each successive study, well, it just looks bad.”

In actuality, she said, the school district’s dropout rate dropped more than 50% from the year before.

“We just tell people--including parents--to look at the last three years,” Townsend said. “Those numbers tell the real story.”

Weinberg acknowledged that the accuracy of the statistics has come a long way in recent years.

“Initially, there were flaws--such as in 1986, there’s no doubt it,” he said. “But now we are getting uniform data. Now school districts are paying attention to this.”

But even school districts showing more favorable dropout numbers had reason to question the way in which the numbers were arrived at.

Robert Thomas, superintendent of the 2,300-student Fallbrook high school district, which showed an 8.5% jump in the dropout rate in the county report, said he has his suspicions over the number crunching.

“I’m really not sure what those numbers mean,” he said.

California calculates the dropout rate by tallying the students who leave school between 10th and 12th grades without without turning to some other way of earning a diploma. When a student does not reappear for 45 days, he or she is counted as a dropout.

“Well, that’s just not reality,” Thomas said. “In our school district, we have children of migrant workers who often return to Mexico for three months out of the year and re-enroll in schools there.

“And we have lots of military families who might move to the East Coast and enroll their children there in schools that do not send for transcripts. In both cases, you’ve got kids who are still in school but listed as dropouts by the county.”

In addition, individual school districts had different ways of calculating dropout rates in 1986. And some students drop out earlier than 10th grade.

Some schools with seemingly good reason to cheer were subdued in their reaction to Thursday’s report.

Take the tiny Julian School District. With a five-year dropout rate that fell 85.6%, the school district posted numbers that would make any official green with envy.

But county officials warned that, with such small districts, large jumps in the rates may occur although the number of students involved is few.

Julian School District Supt. Chet Francisco agreed.

“The county’s disclaimer is accurate, and that’s true with small school districts no matter what the issue,” he said. “And we are small. We’re talking about a total of 10 kids dropping out in that whole five-year period.

“But we’re still happy. Every kid you can keep in school, you feel good about.”

No need to tell that to Tom Williams, director of the Sweetwater program.

Statistics show that the dropout rate at the Sweetwater high school district fell 54% over the past five years--from 26.5% to 12.2% of the student body as a whole.

From Alaska to Louisiana, administrators have come to the school district seeking answers on how to turn around their own dropout situation, Williams said.

Among other programs, the district has seven learning centers, open 14 hours a day to help serve students with part-time jobs--encouraging them to keep up with their school work. As a result, many of the students have returned to the classroom full-time, administrators say.

“Our centers are one-stop academic shopping for kids who might otherwise not be in school--students and teachers in 1-on-1 relationships,” Williams said. “And it’s working. Kids are coming back to school.”

SAN DIEGO DROPOUT RATES

Percent Number of Dropout Rate change dropouts Districts 1991 1990 1989 1986 1986-1991 1991 Julian 1.6 8.2 26.7 11.1 -85.6 1 Coronado 2.5 3.2 8.1 8.4 -70.2 4 Ramona 5.3 19.6 11.8 14.3 -62.9 21 Grossmont 6.5 7.3 5.1 25.6 -74.6 294 Mt. Empire 8.0 7.9 15.5 12.0 -33.3 10 San Dieguito 8.6 10.6 11.4 9.9 -13.1 106 Vista 10.1 20.4 16.9 6.6 53.0 116 Poway 10.4 11.8 7.9 14.3 -27.3 173 Carlsbad 11.4 8.9 14.0 19.0 -40.0 53 San Diego County 11.4 16.2 16.5 24.9 -54.2 2,918 Borrego Springs 12.2 14.4 9.0 0.0 ---- 4 Sweetwater 12.2 17.1 20.1 26.5 -54.0 548 San Diego Unified 12.6 21.9 21.3 32.1 -60.7 963 Fallbrook 12.8 26.2 20.4 11.8 8.5 69 San Marcos 12.9 15.0 22.1 9.7 33.0 74 State 18.2 20.1 21.4 25.0 -27.2 59,612 Escondido 19.5 19.4 23.9 24.3 -19.8 294 Oceanside 21.8 15.5 30.2 29.7 -26.6 188

Source: California Department of Education