Number of LAUSD grads enrolling at UCs declines

By J. Sharon Yee

Daily Bruin Contributor

Melissa Martinez did not go to Franklin High School in Los
Angeles like she was supposed to.

Instead, Martinez, a second-year international economics
student, went to Alverno High School, a private Catholic high
school in Pasadena.

Her experiences with college preparation seem to differ greatly
from those at the public high schools in the neighborhood she lives
in.

While many of Martinez’ classmates went to private colleges like
Stanford and Vassar, she said students at her friends’ public
schools "didn’t seem to get the attention they needed."

"It was harder to get appointments with the counselors or have
close relationships with their teachers," at Franklin, she
said.

According to statistics provided by the Academic Planning and
Budget Office, 51 percent, or 12, 273, of UCLA undergraduate
students come from Los Angeles County.

Community leaders have expressed concern that UCLA is
underserving the high school graduates of urban L.A.

Recently, city commissioners have called for a plan to address
the decline in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD)
graduates entering the UC system.

Statistics from the California High School Performance Reports
presented last Tuesday by the State Department of Education
indicated that only 63.5 percent of LAUSD students graduate from
high school.

Martinez saw this situation in her neighborhood. She explains
how the people around her, students included, seemed surprised when
she told them she was going to study at UCLA.

"I don’t think anyone’s told them that you apply for admission
to college right out of high school, much less attend right after
graduation," she said. "I think they are more geared to community
colleges."

Approximately 7.3 percent of the 142,516 senior high school
students enrolled in the district go on to attend UC schools.

In comparison, 89.3 percent of Orange County students graduate
from high school, and 9.9 percent go on to attend UCs.

Generally, the University of California is supposed to attract
the top 12.5 percent of students in their graduating class, said
Kay Ochi, the college counselor at Fairfax High School in mid-city
L.A.

The four-year completion rate for Fairfax is at 42.3 percent,
well under the district average, with 7.3 percent of graduates
continuing on to UCs.

Despite such low percentages, however, the counselors at Fairfax
"never discourage students and let them apply wherever they want
to," Ochi said.

Though considered to be the top choices of Fairfax students,
schools such as UCLA and UC Berkeley still seem relatively
inaccessible to most students, and counselors often encourage them
to pick second and third choices, she said.

A major hindrance for many students is a lack of English skills,
as many are non-native speakers.

Verbal scores on the SAT tend to suffer because of this, and
thus makes it more difficult for them to be competitive with other
students in the state, Ochi concluded.

Like Martinez, Julie Garza didn’t go to school in her
neighborhood. Garza, a UCLA second-year business and economics
student, attended elementary school in L.A., but her family moved
away in junior high.

Originally slated for Franklin High School, she instead went to
John F. Kennedy High School in the San Fernando Valley.

Nonetheless, some of her best friends attended Franklin, and
after graduation, her family moved back to the area she grew up
in.

Growing up in a "pretty bad neighborhood," Garza said, "it was
less expected of us to go to college, and UCLA in particular."
Though she received encouragement from her family to pursue a
college education, many of her friends did not.

"In schools, there were certain people who encouraged you, but a
lot of the encouragement didn’t come from home," she said. "Mainly
because (families) don’t really understand the point of school, why
someone would want it so badly."

In addition, she continued, the support at her high school was
not easily accessible.

"I had to search out college counselors," Garza said, "If you
don’t look like college material, (counselors) won’t give you the
right classes to prepare you for college admission."

Garza also felt that it was more expected of Kennedy students
that they would go to college.

She says that because expectations were not as high, "It seems
like Franklin made a bigger deal of students’ college admissions,"
often posting up lists of which students were accepted into which
schools, something that was not done at Kennedy.

A college counselor at an Eastside school who asked to remain
nameless expressed concern and discussed possible reasons why
students from Los Angeles seem to be underrepresented at UCLA,
faulting both the university and LAUSD.

"College admissions are getting more and more competitive each
year and with average combined SAT scores of 1,000, a lot of
students (at this high school) are not qualified to go," she
said.

However, she also attributed low admittance and enrollment rates
to the lack of involvement from UCLA itself.

"UCLA is not doing a lot of recruitment, especially of
minorities," she said, "They used to have an outreach person here
at least once a week for eight hours a day, but now we’re lucky to
have them come three or four times a year."

She attributed this to the budget cuts in the outreach programs
at the university, but also suggested that Proposition 209 might
have had some influence as well.

Some of the other reasons included common ones – the university
being too big to accommodate the needs of students, the phenomenon
of many qualified students opting to go to colleges out of state,
and financial aid packages being too small.

LAUSD board member David Tokofsky agreed that outreach from the
university is lacking.

"Does UCLA hold a weekend retreat for inner city kids? No. Does
it offer a summer training institute for our Advanced Placement
teachers? No," he said.

Several UCLA organizations do sponsor outreach, such as the
Community Based Learning Program and the Renaissance Program, which
brings LAUSD students to campus to meet undergraduates.

Other UCLA students admitted they did not attend Los Angeles
city high schools, choosing to enroll at private or magnet schools
instead. Diana Rivas, a first-year mathematics student, is one
example.

Though Rivas attended Garfield High School, located on the
Eastside, she was part of a magnet program specially designed for
college-bound students.

Magnet-program students tend to feel isolated from the rest of
the students in their class and are therefore unaware of what kinds
of goals their peers have about things like college, Rivas
said.

"Students in the magnet program tend to have higher aspirations
than those not in it," she added.

John Marshall High School is an example of a school where,
despite encouragement from faculty, statistics reveal that only
55.3 percent of ninth-graders graduate.

Audrey Smith, a college counselor at Marshall, discussed the
advantages to having a very extensive college center at the school,
which includes computers, pamphlets, books and, occasionally,
speakers from universities.

She also emphasized the importance of letting ninth-graders know
the importance of pursuing a college education.

Twila Wilkin, a senior studying cognitive science, graduated
from Marshall four years ago and, like 33 percent of students in
Los Angeles county, attended a local community college after
graduation.

"Marshall was one of the few high schools in the area that
offered AP classes, which indirectly helped me prepare for my
college education," she said.

"But in terms of direct encouragement, most of that came from
the parents and families of the students," she said.

"The resources were there if you needed them, but they were not
promoted very well," she added.

Wilkin explained that one of the main reasons for not
immediately coming to UCLA was because, as an undeclared student,
"(I) didn’t have $5,000 a year to spend not knowing what I was
going to do."