Helping minority students after Brown vs. Board of Ed.

It's 50 years after the Supreme Court's landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision and not enough has changed for minority students in this country, educators say.

There are still wide disparities in educational opportunities for African-Americans. Minorities often remain segregated in schools because of socio-economic issues, such as affordable housing and parental income levels. They still don't have the same access as white students to educational funding, college preparatory classes, and high-performing teachers, educators say.

By the time they reach eighth grade, minority students nationally are about three years behind other students. Senior high school African-American and Latino students demonstrate skills in reading and math similar to those of 13-year-old whites, according to Education Watch.

"Minority students are still separate and unequal on many dimensions," says Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.

Integration is at a lower level in schools than in the mid-1970s, according to the project. Schools must focus on bringing equal educational opportunities to minority students no matter what school they attend, many educators advocate.

"People who are able to shop for a good public education can assure themselves they will give their children access to quality," said Sharon Robinson, president of the ETS Policy Leadership Institute in Washington, D.C. "Others have to make sure the system has to do for the students regardless."

That means states and the federal government have to start backing up their educational regulations that seek to eliminate achievement gaps, like the No Child Left Behind act or high school exit exams, with sufficient funding, she says.

Schools that have poured resources and dollars into education have seen vast improvements in educational achievement among minority students, says Kati Haycock, director of The Education Trust, which released a 50-state summary of minority student achievement in May.

"What schools do matters big time; what states do matters big time," says Haycock. "In the places where we are working on closing opportunity gaps instead of widening them, the kids nobody believed could learn achieve at high levels."

Studies show that:

* African-American and Hispanic students attend elementary schools in which two-thirds of their classmates are poor, while whites attend schools where fewer than a third of their classmates are poor.

* Only 50 percent of all African-American students graduated from high school in 2001 compared to 75 percent of white students.

* Teachers in poorer districts do not have the same level of certification as teachers in wealthier districts. In California, about 22 percent of teachers in the poorest districts aren't certified while only 2 percent in the wealthy districts aren't certified.

* African-Americans make up 17 percent of public school students, but fewer than 8 percent of teachers.

* Wealthy students are twice as likely as poor students to be on college-prep tracks.