UCLA study analyzes low college attendance in California

A recent study released by a group of UCLA researchers found
that California sends a lower percentage of high school students to
four-year universities than all but one other state, and attributed
this in large part to a lack of adequate preparation programs.

Researchers from the UC All Campus Consortium on Research for
Diversity and the UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education and
Access found that only Mississippi sent a smaller percentage of its
high school graduates to four-year universities.

The report, which focuses on the California high schools’
class of 2004, shows that though 69 percent of students graduate,
only 26 percent are eligible to attend a four-year university.

The study is part of an effort by the researchers to label and
address what they see as the significant roadblocks high school
students encounter on their way to college.

The study stressed that California has the lowest ratio of
counselors and teachers to students in the nation and ranks 43rd in
the nation on educational spending per student.

Researchers based California’s amount of educational
expenses on regional cost adjustments, which took into account the
cost of living.

This lack of educational spending is highlighted in the study as
the cause of the low quality of instruction and guidance in
California high schools.

“It’s no surprise that the state’s failure to
invest in education has meant we have fewer teachers and counselors
than other states,” Jeannie Oakes, presidential professor of
IDEA, said during a press teleconference. “And yet,
California’s per capita income is among the highest in the
country.”

Researchers said that California, the eleventh-highest per
capita income state in the nation, could alleviate the
state’s educational shortcomings if it would only match what
the 10 richest states spend on education.

“California spends just 75 cents for every dollar the
other high-income per capita states spend. This one-quarter
difference adds up,” John Rogers, one of the principal
researchers of the report and associate director for IDEA, said.
“If California spent as much as the other states with high
per capita income, each California classroom of 30 students would
receive $68,000 more each year.”

California once had one of the better-funded educational systems
in the nation. In 1975, California was ranked 18th in public-school
funding.

“The decline is in the 1970s with the … passage of
Proposition 13, which greatly reduced the ability to raise money
through local property taxes and transferred most of the
responsibility for funding schools to the state,” Oakes
said.

Because solutions to these barriers, especially the financial
ones, will require legislative action to fix, statistics were
organized so that senators and members of the state Assembly could
see high school statistics by district, she said.

Rogers led a conference, cosponsored by State Assembly Speaker
Fabian Nuñez, during which they spoke to legislative staff in
Sacramento shortly after the report was released.

Also listed by the study as obstructing a high school
student’s path to college is the poor access to
college-preparatory courses. Less than half of California high
schools have enough classes to enable all students to complete
college-prep courses.

“Whether or not (students go to a four-year university)
should really be a matter of their own decisions rather than a
matter of being at a school with such a weak college preparatory
infrastructure that the decision is being taken away from
them,” Oakes said.

The California Department of Education reported that out of all
the students who graduated from high schools in Los Angeles in
2004, only 13 percent had taken enough courses to be eligible for
acceptance to a four-year university.

Twenty-three percent of graduating students go on to community
colleges, but Oakes said low transfer rates to four-year
universities show that a poor high school education still affects
the students.

“Many students show up at (colleges) with the paper
qualifications but are not prepared to do college-level
work,” Oakes said.

The report found this was due in large part to the fact that
more than 25 percent of schools have improperly assigned
instructors to college preparatory courses and 33 percent of math
course are taught by improperly trained teachers.

In the case of City Honors High of Inglewood, only 47 percent of
teachers teaching college-prep courses have a credential in the
subject they teach, and none of their math teachers has credentials
in the subject.

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