Friday, April 26, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- For the third straight year, the dropout rate in Nevada high schools has risen, despite the fact that more money is being put into public schools.
A report compiled by the state Department of Education says 10 percent of the 65,393 high school students left school in 1994-95, compared with 9.6 percent in the previous school year.
The study is to be presented to the state Board of Education on Saturday at its meeting in Las Vegas.
"That's bad and we're concerned," said Frank Brown, senior member on the education board.
Board member Terry Garcia-Cahlan of Las Vegas said the rising rate is a "detriment to the state. There's no one quick fix. It's a multi-faceted problem."
Garcia-Cahlan said one of the better ways to attack the problem is for more early intervention programs for children in the preschool and primary grades.
"Most teachers can tell by the third grade which students will be dropping out" in later years, she said.
Board member Yvonne Shaw of Sparks said Clark County is conducting interviews with 1,000 students to find out why the dropout rate is rising. She says there are dozen of reasons.
"It will take more than the school system to fix this," said Shaw, who has retired from teaching after 34 years. "A lot of it is societal ills."
The state has increased its basic support per student from $3,110 in 1990-91 to $3,323 in 1994-95.
The report shows the dropout rate ranges from a low of 0.7 percent in Lincoln County to a high of 13.7 percent in Storey County. In Clark County, 4,855 of the 40,248 high school students dropped out for a 11.6 percent rate, up from 10.9 percent the previous year.
Boys are more likely to leave school early than girls. The rate for male students is 10.5 percent compared with 9.4 percent for females.
Hispanic students continued to have the highest dropout rate, registering 16.4 percent for 1994-95, up from 15.7 percent the previous year. Dropout rates for blacks fell from 12 percent in 1993-94 to 11.3 percent in 1994-95.
White students dropped out at a higher rate in 1994-95 at 8.6 percent, up half of a percent from the previous year. Rates for American Indian-Alaskan Native dropped from 13.8 percent to 12.4 percent and rose for Asians/Pacific Islanders from 7.9 percent to 8.8 percent.
The report says 44.4 percent of the dropouts were withdrawn by themselves or their parents; 26.9 percent did not return from summer vacation; 17.2 percent had excessive absences; 10 percent were withdrawn by their schools; and 1.3 percent were jailed.
The state board is having a series of town hall sessions to receive testimony on how to prevent dropouts.
Garcia-Cahlan said the board hopes to have its recommendations ready by this summer. But she believes that early education is one key. "We're 50th in the nation in the money for early childhood programs," she said. "We do nothing."
There are federal programs, including Head Start, she said, but the state is not spending adequate money in this area.
Garcia-Cahlan said with Nevada's growing population, the schools are seeing children coming into class with greater needs. Many of these students start behind and never catch up, she said.
"As the population increases, it exacerbates the problem," she said.
Brown of Carson City, who is completing his 12th and last year on the state board, says there should be a big push to create the job of elementary counseling consultant in the Department of Education. This would allow the state to provide leadership to local schools in developing counseling programs for students who have problems.
"We also need to increase our follow-up studies of graduates in Nevada to find out what are the most useful courses and what is less useful," he said. Nevada law bars him from running for a fourth term.
Shaw said she's not convinced the figures in the annual report are correct. They don't track those students who leave school but then return later to a GED program or to complete school.
"Over a 10-year span, I don't think there are as many dropouts as recorded for the immediate year," she said.
And there are programs now in the schools that are helping. She believes the "school-to-work" effort will aid in keeping students in class.
"I think it's totally unrealistic to think we can get a 100 percent graduation rate but it has been increasing, not going down," Shaw said. "Nobody reports that."
The Nevada Goals 2000 Commission, co-chaired by Gov. Bob Miller's wife, Sandy, found Nevada has the highest percentage of 16- to 19-year-olds in the nation who have dropped out of secondary schools, based on the 1990 national census.
In 1990, 78 percent of Nevada's 19- and 20-year-olds had a high school credential compared with 87 percent nationally. The commission's goal for Nevada is to have a 90 percent high school completion rate by the year 2000.
Shaw, who served on the Goals 2000 Commission, said efforts are being made to lower the dropout rate but "it's a slow process. Like everything else, everything takes money."
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