Study Finds Stability in City Schools : Education: Five of six students in San Diego ended the school year in the classrooms in which they started. The rate was higher than expected.

For every six students enrolled at a San Diego city school at the beginning of the school year two years ago, five ended the year in the same classroom--a rate higher than expected, according to a new study by the nation’s eighth-largest urban district.

The findings for the 1987-’88 school year show the overall stability rate for the 119,300-student district--59% nonwhite with a large and rapidly growing immigrant population--is far greater than previously thought from anecdotal evidence from school principals and teachers.

“Perhaps the most significant aspect of these stability rates is how high (83.3%) they are,” the report concludes. “Although many schools have a very high level of transience that these stability rates do not capture, most students in all schools are stable.”

High transience has been cited by many school administrators as a reason for continuing difficulties in making rapid improvements in student achievement.

Many schools showed stability rates as high as the mid-90s, while a few--especially with larger populations of poorer, non-white students--had the lowest rates, in the mid-60s, meaning that from six to eight times as many of their students moved during the year as did students in the most stable schools.

The report, which involved creating a computer program to track each student in the district, also found:

* Asian and Filipino students had the highest stability rates, and black students the lowest, with a small number of blacks attending three or more schools in a single year.

* Males had moved slightly more than females.

* Students receiving free lunches--a measure of lower socioeconomic level--had moved substantially more than those not subsidized.

* Students in kindergarten and in grades nine to 11 had the lowest stability rates by grade; 12th-graders showed the highest stability.

* Students suspended from school were twice as likely to have had low stability. Students designated at-risk, meaning they were reading more than a grade level behind their peers or failing graduation requirements, were also twice as likely to have moved more.

* Students kept in the same grade for a second year were 2 1/2 times more likely to have been less stable.

The report by school research specialist Peter Bell was developed as a way to cope with the imprecision of existing data.

Most schools have some students who enter or leave weeks or months after the school year starts. But, in most cases, those numbers, although they cause some disruption in the pace of curriculum, are not significant, Bell said.

“For the majority of schools, the number of late entries nowhere near approaches the number of stable students,” Bell said. “Most schools haven’t realized that it isn’t as helter-skelter as things have seemed. . . . At virtually all schools, the vast majority of students starting the year will continue to be there at year’s end.”

For example, at Sunset View Elementary in Point Loma, 451 students remained at the school for the entire year, 25 left, and 31 entered late, for a 94.8% stability rate. At La Jolla High, the rate was 90.7%.

For a few schools with low socioeconomics, however, Bell said, late entries become critical to understanding the effect on school climate.

At Hamilton Elementary in East San Diego, with the district’s lowest stability rate at 65.6%, 470 of the 716 students who began the year at the year-round school in July were there the following June, roughly four of six. But Hamilton also had 402 students enter weeks or months after the school year began, bringing its enrollment up over 1,100 by mid-year.

“The extreme is at a few schools like Hamilton, which seem to serve as gateways for a lot of students first coming into the district, and where you have to look at the number of late entries as well,” Bell said.

Broken down by race, Latino students, at 82.2%, were slightly below the district rate, but blacks, at 78.1%, were substantially below. White stability was 84.1%, Indochinese 85.7, Filipino 88.5 and other Asians 87.7. Black students were proportionately twice as likely to be mobile as Latinos, three times as mobile as whites and 10 times as mobile as Asian students. Bell found the comparison data with Asian students surprising because many educators have assumed that Indochinese students move frequently because of their poor socioeconomics.

The report did not look at enrollment changes between school years. Nor did it examine the correlation between low stability and dropout rates.