LAUSD'S BIG FAILURE; CLASS OF 2000 PROMISES WERE BROKEN AND KIDS ARE PAYING THE PRICE.

Byline: Sherry Joe Crosby Staff Writer

The future never looked brighter than in 1988 when the Class of 2000 entered kindergarten.

Then-Superintendent Leonard Britton threw a districtwide party for 60,000 kindergartners as a kickoff for a long-term study of the class.

Dignitaries visited campuses and made speeches, parents beamed and children stuffed time capsules with drawings and essays describing a Jetsons-like future of flying cars and rocket ships.

Now the future is here - and it bears scant resemblance to what district officials, parents and even students envisioned.

An academic profile of this year's high school seniors shows that the Los Angeles Unified School District has failed the Class of 2000 in significant ways:

Graduation rates have stagnated;

SAT scores are down slightly;

While dropout rates appear to have improved, the district hasn't activated a sophisticated computer system to accurately track missing students.

Now the district is embarking on a host of reforms aimed at benefiting the next generation.

``The promise is not there for the bulk of kids,'' said Day Higuchi, president of United Teachers-Los Angeles. ``For kids who don't see their future in college, they don't see anything. There's no pot of gold at the end.''

Certainly many members of the Class of 2000 who have made it to their senior year are doing well and have bright futures.

But thousands did not make it, others are failing, face an uncertain future and are unable to take advantage of academic reforms just starting to take hold.

Dreams abandoned

After the Class of 2000 started kindergarten in 1987, Britton's ambitious plan never got off the ground and was quickly abandoned amid the district's financial turmoil of the early 1990s that left teachers with a 12 percent pay cut.

Britton had hoped to create a computer database that would track each child's test scores, grades, attendance and other details from kindergarten through 12th grade. Armed with that information, Britton envisioned teachers retooling their approach, reaching out to failing students and preventing them from dropping out.

``I wanted to see what was happening to them gradewise because you can sometimes pick up trends,'' Britton said. ``You can get early warning signs that something is not going right with a particular child.''

But the dream never materialized.

``It sort of died a natural death,'' Britton said. ``I was only there three years, and the last year was a crazy year. Things were happening between the superintendent and board. We had budget problems. We had a teachers' strike. Everything was rechanneled in efforts and funds.''

Not getting better

The Class of 2000 hasn't fared so well either.

Since they started school in 1987, statewide graduation rates have remained flat.

According to the state Department of Education, only 68.5 percent of ninth-graders who started high school in 1983-84 stayed in school long enough to graduate in 1987-88. A decade later, 67.2 percent of the 1994-95 entering freshman class graduated in 1997-98.

The graduation rate for students in Los Angeles schools is even worse - 53 percent in the most recent year.

``That's a lousy percentage,'' said Donna Rothenbaum, an evaluation and research assistant for the state Department of Education. ``We haven't shown any improvement.''

Statewide, dropout rates have declined from 6.2 percent of ninth- through 12th-graders in 1990-91 to 2.9 percent in 1997-98. Districtwide, dropout rates have plummeted from 16.75 percent in 1987-88 to 5 percent in 1997-98.

But district officials question the accuracy of the numbers. Pending a change in the way data is collected by the state Department of Education, the district has been reluctant to implement a sophisticated computer tracking system that would provide more accurate dropout statistics.

SAT scores also have remained flat. In the Los Angeles school district, scores have actually dipped slightly.

This year, Los Angeles high school seniors scored a combined total of 880 points out of a possible 1,600 points on the college entrance exam. In 1987-88, they scored a combined total of 926 points.

``They gave that class special media hype, but other than that I don't think they were treated better or differently than any other class,'' said Stanley Malin, a former teacher at Telfair Avenue School in Pacoima, where kindergartners placed mementos in a time capsule 11 years ago.

Fighting to succeed

Some students are achieving success despite systemic problems.

Diana Suranyi, 17, who was interviewed by the Daily News in 1988, said she believes she'll be well prepared for college despite having had to fight some teachers who discouraged her from taking tougher academic courses.

``Some of my teachers have said you're not smart enough. It does put your self-esteem down,'' said Suranyi, a senior at Chatsworth High School who hopes to study premedicine at the University of California, Santa Barbara, or at Berkeley.

Diana's mother, Susan, said her daughter's success is her own.

``Her education was average. I don't think that she got anything special,'' said Suranyi, a school nurse. ``If you're going to succeed in public school, it has to come from the child. It's her own desires and ambitions that she is were she is.''

Robert Curreri, 17, said he has enjoyed a different academic experience.

``All of our teachers push you,'' said Curreri, a senior at Crescenta Valley High School in the Glendale Unified School District where the school's most recent combined SAT score topped 1,128 points.

``I feel very well prepared. I feel I'm going to do very well in college,'' said Curreri, who plans to study sports medicine and continue playing water polo, an extracurricular activity he discovered six years ago.

Reforms begun

To be certain, education has improved during the past decade. A statewide class-size reduction program cut the number of children to 20 per teacher in kindergarten through third grade. Similar efforts have begun in eighth- and ninth-grade English classes and some ninth-grade math classes.

Nancy Slosberg, a kindergarten and reading teacher at Welby Way Elementary in Canoga Park, said the smaller classes have benefited students and teachers alike.

``Kindergartners need to get up and move around, and with fewer students in the classroom, they can do that,'' she said. ``We also know the children better, we get to learn where they're at (academically), and we can offer more individualized attention.''

Academic reform programs such as Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now, or LEARN, has shifted decision-making from the district's central offices to school campuses. And a new California law has banned social promotion, the practice of advancing ill-prepared students to the next grade.

``I've seen how we've improved,'' Slosberg said. ``We're taking care of the problems before they become worse.''

Despite those dramatic changes, today's students are no better prepared academically than they were 25 years ago, said Warren Furumoto, director of the Center for Academic Preparedness at California State University, Northridge.

He said too many teachers still ask students to memorize disparate pieces of information rather than analyze and evaluate facts in meaningful ways.

``The way we ask students to process information hasn't changed,'' Furumoto said. ``They're pretty much doing the same thing they were doing 20 to 30 years ago.''

What has changed, Furumoto said, is the amount of work students have to contend with.

``That has increased tremendously,'' he said. ``The pressure on students is fantastically overwhelming.''

According to a University of Michigan study, average homework for 9- to 11-year-olds increased from 169 minutes per week to 210 minutes between 1981 and 1997.

On Monday: The hopes and dreams of the Class of 2013.

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Photo

Photo: High school senior Diana Suranyi, 17, holds a certificate she was given when she started school.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer