Quality education report.

High expectations of students and giving extra support in the way of tutoring and other help can close achievement gaps between poor and minority students and white counterparts in U.S. schools.

This is a big lesson in a recent study conducted by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund, which was founded in 1969 as an arm of the Civil Rights Coalition. LCCREF uses research and education campaigns to promote the need for national policies that support civil rights and social and economic justice.

The report, Realize the Dream: Quality Education Is a Civil Right, explains how well-run education programs can inform policies and how wise policies can encourage effective education reforms.

No single policy or idea can make or break a school, but programs revealed in the report rely on energetic and committed leadership that filters down to principals and teachers to create a nurturing environment. For example, the report states that all students must have high quality supplemental and after-school programs. Higher Achievement, which is held after school and during the summer, helps close the achievement gap by offering underserved middle school students a year-round education and high school preparatory program.

"So many places just discount the ability of black and Latino students to do hard work," says David Goldberg, the report's author.

But San Jose Unified School District defied popular belief, says Goldberg, also program manager of education reform and special counsel at LCCREF A few years ago, administrators at San Jose, led by former superintendent of schools Linda Murray, wanted to ensure every student graduated capable of attending a University of California school because graduation standards in most California schools were not high enough to get into the university system. "So they raised the graduation standards significantly," Goldberg says. All students are now required to take three years of college preparatory math and science and two years of foreign language.

And they blew out of the water the fallacy that when graduation standards rise, more students will drop out, Goldberg adds. Graduation rates actually rose from 71 percent in 1998 to 74 percent in 2004 at San Jose, which mostly has Latino students.

They created a system so that students who were struggling were not tracked into remedial courses. By high school, every student was qualified to take an Advanced Placement class. The Latino participation rate in AP classes more than doubled over roughly five years.

Among the steps made: offering Saturday academies and educational partnerships with local community colleges to supplement learning.

realizethedream.civilrights.org