O.C. at Top, Bottom of Dropout List : Schools: U.S. Department of Education study finds Santa Ana has the highest rate, Irvine the lowest. Officials in both districts criticize report’s accuracy.

Orange County cities reflect both the best and the worst in the nation in the number of high school dropouts, according to a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Education.

The department’s fourth annual report to Congress shows that 36.7% of Santa Ana teen-agers 16 to 19 years old were high school dropouts in 1991, more than three times the national average. In nearby Irvine, only 2.1% of the 16- to 19-year-olds had dropped out of school, the lowest dropout rate in the nation.

But officials in the Santa Ana and Irvine school districts criticized the accuracy of the dropout numbers, which were calculated by the National Center for Education Statistics based on the proportion of students in that age group who had not completed high school and were not currently enrolled.

Those numbers would include teen-agers who moved to Santa Ana and never intended to enroll in school, said Rudy M. Castruita, superintendent of the Santa Ana Unified School District. Since Santa Ana attracts so many Mexican immigrants looking for work, the method used by the Department of Education overcounts the school dropouts, he said.

Schools in California count a student as a dropout when he or she leaves a high school before graduating and that school never receives a request from the student or another school to forward the student’s academic record.

Castruita said the national dropout report labeling Santa Ana the highest was shocking, in light of the district’s recent improvements to keep students in school.

“If you take a look at our state statistics, we had a 1986 dropout rate of 41.8%,” Castruita said. “But we’ve reduced that dropout rate to a 24.6% (in 1991), which is one of the best reductions in the state of California.”

The same state dropout figures, released in April, show Irvine had a dropout rate of 5.6%.

The Department of Education said its study of dropout rates revealed a mixture of good and bad news for the country, showing high school dropout rates are declining for blacks and whites but not for Hispanics.

The report measures the dropout rate in three ways. Officials track those who leave high school each year; the proportion of the population that has not completed high school, regardless of when a student dropped out; and a single group of students over a period of time.

Nationally, the percentage of students ages 15 through 24 in grades 10 through 12 who quit in a single year without completing high school declined about 34%cent, from a 6.1% rate in 1980 to 4% in 1991.

Hispanic dropout rates have remained high during the last 20 years, while the dropout rates for whites and blacks declined between 1980 and 1991.

From 1972 to 1991, the report showed, the dropout rates for 16- through 24-year-old blacks went from 21.3% to 13.6%. For whites in that age group, the rates dropped from 12.3% in 1972 to 8.9% in 1991. The rates are for those who have not completed high school, regardless of when they dropped out.

According to the report, the Hispanic dropout rate was 35.3% in 1991 for ages 16 through 24. In 1972, that rate was 34.3%.

The Associated Press also contributed to this story.