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The nation’s dropout problem is most severe in a few hundred big-city schools that graduate less than half of their freshman classes, according to a Harvard University study.

The study, which included ClevelaHarnd and Columbus, found that the dropout problem is largely confined to 200 to 300 high schools in the nation’s 35 biggest cities. It also showed that most of the problem schools were big - more than 900 students -with predominantly black or Hispanic student populations.

The findings are significant because they isolate the problem and suggest changes - such as splitting big schools into smaller ones - that could help keep students from dropping out, said Harvard Professor Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project, which sponsored the research with t he Cambridge, Mass.-based Achieve Inc.

“This measures how many ninth-graders are around to walk across the stage” to graduate, Orfield said. “A lot of these kids vanish. The test numbers for the school might go up, but we feel schools should be held accountable for graduating their students.”

The two Ohio districts in the study drew mixed reviews. Researchers Robert Balfanz and Nettie Legters of Johns Hopkins University said less than 50 percent of the freshmen at five Cleveland high schools and 11 Columbus high schools in the 1992-93 school year became seniors in 1995-96, the most recent year the study examined.

Those numbers represented a big turnaround for Cleveland, which fared the worst among 3.5 cities in a similar analysis of the fate of the freshman class of 1989. During that period, 13 of 14 city high schools lost more than 50 percent of their ninth-graders.

“It was the case that interested us the most,” Balfanz said of Cleveland. “It was the one major city that at least had the appearance of improvement and where there may have been real improvement.”

The study suggests that one way to see real improvement is by creating smaller schools or “schools within schools” that give students - especially freshmen - more individualized instruction and counseling.

In Cleveland, three high schools - James F. Rhodes, South and Glenville - have received grants from the U.S. Department of Education to begin or continue such projects. Similar initiatives have been started in Cincinnati and Toledo.

The strategy has begun to pay off at Rhodes. Three years ago, the West Side high school put its freshmen in a special “success academy,” giving them extended class periods and career counseling and sequestering them in their own portion of the building with the same group of teachers and peers.

The result: Last year, only 36 freshmen failed to advance to the 10th grade, compared with the usual number of 150 to 200.

“It creates an environment more friendly,” said Clarence Gaines, organizational facilitator for the Rhodes project. “The dropout rate really’ begins in the ninth grade. The key is to keep them on track.”

Although Cleveland did well in the study, the district’s own figures show a sobering reality that two out of three freshmen still do not graduate four years later.

For example, the 1998-99 dropout rate was nearly 67 percent -far worse than the state average of 19.4 percent or the 45 percent rate for its largest urban districts.

“The Harvard study allows us to develop strategies exactly for those schools in the most need of assistance,” said Michael Charney, professional-issues director of the Cleveland Teachers Union. “We can change this. We cannot retreat ostrichlike and throw up our hands and say we can’t do anything.”

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