BALANCING THE BOOKS `IN THE WEIRD WORLD OF STATE EDUCATION FUNDING, COLLEGE CREDITS CAN BE FINANCIAL DEBITS FOR HIGH SCHOOLS.

SOMETHING is amiss when the state penalizes public high schools for letting ambitious 11th- and 12th-graders take a few college courses on the side.

But that's the policy in California, and state officials are doing the right thing by trying to change it.

California public school districts depend upon the state as their primary source of revenue, allocated on the basis of average daily attendance.

A quirk in the law - previously ignored by state officials - calls for the state to pay only three-fourths of the usual amount for any high schoolers who are simultaneously enrolled in college courses.

Amazingly, the 75 percent payment applies even when students carry a full load of high school classes on top of their college courses.

Although the state has not enforced the regulation, officials say they intend to start doing so (retroactive to July) unless the Legislature changes the law.

Thankfully, we are seeing action by lawmakers on this issue. State Sen. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, has introduced a measure to revise the law to allow full payment for every student who attends high school full time, regardless of college enrollment.

According to state officials, Gov. Pete Wilson favors the change and intends to sign Costa's bill into law if the Legislature passes it. (Wilson vetoed a similar bill last year only because the Legislature amended it, tacking on some unrelated provisions that the governor disagreed with.)

We hope Costa's legislation, SB 292, takes effect. Without it, the William S. Hart Union High School District in Santa Clarita stands to lose $250,000 - a significant sum for the district - because 300 of its students are concurrently enrolled in college.

The Los Angeles Unified School District also could lose a large amount of revenue. Although no figure was available for the entire LAUSD, officials say that at just two San Fernando Valley colleges there are more than 900 high-schoolers taking classes - 698 at Pierce College in Woodland Hills and 207 at Valley College in Van Nuys.

If the Costa bill doesn't become law, then the fear of losing revenue might cause school officials to discourage bright students from taking college courses early. That would be a tragic disservice to young people.

It would be far better if policy makers created financial incentives to reward positive accomplishments, such as accelerated improvements on standardized achievement tests - or more rapid success in shifting limited-English-ability pupils out of bilingual education and into mainstream classes conducted in English.

As things are arranged now, schools actually lose revenue when students move out of bilingual classes - which has led to unnecessary expansion of the bilingual-education bureaucracy. But that's another subject.