Schools’ Performance Linked to Neighborhoods’ Prosperity

It’s new proof of an old idea: that a school’s performance is inextricably linked to the economic health of the neighborhood around it. And two San Fernando Valley campuses typify that marriage--for better, though mostly for worse--in a state study released today ranking California’s public high schools.

The study found that campuses in more affluent suburban areas outperformed those in poorer neighborhoods, reflecting the social and economic advantages of higher-income families whose children score higher on standardized tests, have tougher classes to challenge them and go on to college more often.

In the Valley, that fact of life has spelled struggle not just for schools such as Monroe High in North Hills, where long-term poverty has adversely affected campus life, but also schools like Canoga Park High, caught in a more recent downward spiral of changing demographics that has left only those campuses on the western and northern edges of the Valley with large numbers of college-bound, middle-class students.

“Educational performance is affected by social status,” said David Marsh, professor of instruction and curriculum at the USC School of Education, “and that’s disturbing to people in education because we’re really trying to have all the kids succeed.”

Both Monroe and Canoga Park fare poorly in key categories among Valley high schools in the study by the California Department of Education, which examined dropout rates, scores on the Scholastic Assessment Test and Advanced Placement exams, course offerings and matriculation rates at two- and four-year state colleges.

For Canoga Park, the school’s overall low ranking has followed a steady economic decline of the neighborhood from a middle-class bedroom community during the 1960s and ‘70s into a working-class enclave mired in a stubborn recession, with growing numbers of immigrant families.

At Canoga Park High School, a few miles but a world away from high-performing Taft High in Woodland Hills, one-third of its 1,700 students speak little or no English. Even more come from households so impoverished that the youths qualify for free or discounted meals at the school.

As a result, educators say, the proportion of students who scored at least 900 points on SAT exams was below state, county and Los Angeles Unified School District averages. Fewer college-preparatory courses are taught at Canoga Park than at neighboring schools such as Taft.

And only 47% of Canoga Park seniors went on to one of the state’s public colleges, a distressing 15% drop over two years.

“I was not aware,” Principal Larry Higgins said of the decline in college enrollment among his students. “It gives us a wake-up call of what we should be doing with the kids.”

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Escalating fees at UC and CSU campuses, and a decrease in student loans, have put public post-secondary education out of reach for many teenagers, who often realize early on that high school must be immediately followed by work.

Monica Martinez, a sophomore at Canoga Park, hopes to attend college, but has no illusions about the difficulties she might face.

“You have to pay a lot of money to go to college,” she said. “Your parents can’t support you, so you have to go to work.”

Educators also blamed rules that force undocumented students to pay out-of-state tuition at community colleges, a financial burden that few can shoulder.

“That’s the largest group that’s hit and just told ‘No’ at the gate,” said Jannis Livingston, a counselor at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys. “The key factor is that there is a diligent effort to keep them out.”

Since 1991-92, the UC campuses and community colleges have demanded proof of legal residency from noncitizen students and charged out-of-state tuition rates to those unable to produce documentation. The CSU schools--created for the largest share of high school graduates moving to four-year colleges--instituted such a fee hike last year.

Higgins is optimistic that improved daily attendance at Canoga Park over the last few years will prompt more students to graduate, creating a larger pool of college applicants.

In addition, the freshmen and sophomores who now attend Canoga Park’s 2-year-old magnet program--specializing in environmental science and agriculture--are expected to increase the number of college applicants in coming years.

“Basically the magnet is a college preparatory magnet. There is a career option other than college” in agriculture, Higgins said. “But many of our students’ [study plans] are in line with UC campuses, especially UC Davis, which has an agricultural program.”

But magnet programs, which typically draw on youths from outside the school’s attendance boundaries, can only partially counter the deleterious effects of racking poverty and social instability.

Monroe attests to that.

With a one-of-a-kind magnet program focusing on law and government, the campus attracts high-achieving students from throughout the mammoth Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest.

Indeed, in the study released today, Monroe scored well above the state, county and district average for passing AP tests, with a 5.2% increase in 1994-95 over the 1992-93 school year.

Despite a small drop, the school also fared better than the district average in the rate of students scoring 900 or more on the SAT. Monroe’s percentage of college prep courses was also higher than average within the Los Angeles school system, though below the county and state as a whole.

But state statistics, which Monroe’s administrators question, peg the school’s success in having students complete all four years of school at just 51%--among the bottom 2% of campuses statewide. And the drop in the number of students who go on to attend state-run colleges was even more dramatic at Monroe than at Canoga Park: 22%.

School officials noted that the state report reflects only those students who opt for public institutions in California.

“It does not include the kids who are going to Harvard, Yale and Boston [College],” Principal Joan Elam said. This year alone, she said, four students have been accepted at the private Mount St. Mary’s College.

However, the same financial restrictions apply to Monroe students as at Canoga Park, which means that even those seniors who are admitted to UC and CSU schools may not have the resources to attend. Of all Valley high schools, Monroe has the highest proportion--54%--of students on a free or reduced-price meals program; the number of youths with limited English skills is exceeded only by Grant High School in Van Nuys.

“Many of the students who are eligible to go don’t go because so many are undocumented and can’t pay for it,” counselor Stephen Kleinberg said. “There’s no way they can get financial aid.

“A lot of them don’t apply because they know there’s no funding.”

Times education writer Richard Lee Colvin contributed to this story.