WASHINGTON -- Latino students are sticking with school more than many experts have presumed, a new study says.

About 14 percent of U.S.-born Latino youths dropped out of school in 2000, according to the Pew Hispanic Center study released Thursday.

While high, this is still lower than the 20 percent to 30 percent Latino dropout rates that are commonly cited.

"(Our study) reveals a problem that is quite grave and that has serious long-term implications for the education system, Latino communities and the nation as a whole," analyst Richard Fry reported. "However, these numbers show that the problem is not as bad as is commonly thought."

The difference, Fry said, comes in the distinction between immigrant and native-born students. Until now, most assessments have overlooked this distinction and considered the Latino population as a monolith.

As recently as March, for instance, the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans asserted that "one of every three Hispanic American students fails to complete high school."

Immigrants, though, skew the results because many are unlikely to even enter U.S. schools. They nonetheless get counted as dropouts, even if they immediately started working and never set foot in a U.S. classroom. Dropout rates can also shift depending on which age groups are examined.

The distinctions can matter.

A continued higher-than-average dropout rate for Latino students mean many will be confined to low-wage jobs. On the other hand, the new reassessment also suggests U.S. schools are doing a better job at retaining Latino students than critics believed. This is particularly important as education officials cite dropout rates as a measure of school progress.

In California, for instance, the new study says the overall dropout rate for Latino students fell from 25 percent in 1990 to 18 percent in 2000. Among the native-born Latino students in California studied by Fry, the dropout rate was an even lower 10 percent.

The improvement hasn't been across the board, however.

The Fresno Unified School District, California's fourth largest with 82,000 students, examined dropout rates for both native-born and immigrant Latino students after being apprised of the new study.

"We found there was no difference in the dropout rate at all," district spokeswoman Susan Bedi said.

The Elk Grove Unified School District maintained a "pretty flat" Latino dropout rate of about 20 percent between 1990 and 2000, district spokesman Jim Elliott said.

All of the districts are trying different tactics to cope with the problem.

"We continually evaluate what is working and what is not working, and we continually stress to parents and students the importance of staying in schools," said Susanna Mendieta, a spokeswoman for the 35,000-student Modesto City Schools District.

In particular, Fry suggested that schools focus more attention on native-born Latinos, who are more likely to speak English than immigrants. The study shows 16 percent of Latino students nationwide who speak English "at least well" drop out, compared to 59 percent of Latino students who speak English "less than well."

Elliott said, "the quicker they learn English, the better off they'll be," and other educators agree.

"If they come here at an older age, it's difficult to get past that language barrier," said Elaine Post, public information officer for the Merced County Office of Education. "We have more success with the younger students."

High birth and immigration rates helped the Latino population in the United States to more than double during the 1990s. Among minority groups, Latinos now outnumber non-Latino African Americans, 37 million to 36.1 million, the Associated Press reported.

About one in six U.S. children is Latino. That is expected to increase to one in four by 2020, the AP said. Many communities -- particularly those in the Midwest and South that have not had large Latino populations before -- are struggling to meet the needs of new arrivals with limited English skills.

The federal government now requires schools to improve English proficiency and achievement among Latinos under the No Child Left Behind law pushed by President Bush.

The nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center, which sponsored the latest study and others like it, is a Washington-based project of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication.

Seven percent of white youth between the ages of 16 and 19 are dropouts, as are 12 percent of African American teens. By comparison, Census Bureau estimates identify 21 percent of teen Latinos as dropouts.

But the study noted the gross numbers can deceive.

"Although one in five Hispanic youth has not completed high school, many of them did not drop out of U.S. schools," Fry stated, whereas "Latino youth who are educated abroad are nearly all high school dropouts."

This causes the numbers to jump. Of 529,000 Latino students ages 16 to 19 who are dropouts, Fry found that about 175,000 are immigrants who ended their schooling overseas.

Moreover, the national Latino dropout rate has been improving along with the dropout rate for non-Latino students. The dropout rate for native-born Latinos fell from 15.2 percent to 14 percent between 1990 and 2000.

The study also sheds new light on the immigrant work ethic, as immigrant school dropouts tend to earn more than their white teen counterparts. Foreign-born Latino school dropouts have average annual incomes of $10,000, compared to $7,300 for the white dropouts.