Summit closes in on achievement gap.

Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-Guard

OK, readers, time for a little quiz.

Should a 1937 graduate of Spelman College be referred to as an alumna or alumnus?

(Hint to white readers: Ask your African-American friends for help on this one.)

Second question: What race was the family that filed a segregation lawsuit against the Westminster School District in 1945?

(Hint to white and African-American readers: Ask your Latino friends for help with this one.)

Don't have any friends of a different ethnic origin than your own? Well, that may be part of the problem. Fifty years after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. the Board of Education that segregating students based on race was illegal, de facto segregation still exists, not only in school populations across the country, but throughout the larger culture as well.

On Saturday, about 80 people gathered at Sheldon High School in Eugene to discuss a byproduct of segregation - the achievement gap that separates African-American, Latino and American Indian students from their white and Asian counterparts.

At the second annual Summit on African-American Student Achievement, educators, experts, parents and students took a look at the lingering problem.

In Oregon's elementary schools, students of all races perform at about the same levels, said George Russell, superintendent of the Eugene School District.

At middle school, the gap becomes apparent and widens as students progress through high school, he said.

In Eugene schools, for example, 42 percent of African-American boys meet state benchmarks in math at the eighth-grade level, but the number slides to only 11 percent by the 11th grade. There's a similar slide for girls from 44 percent to 24 percent from eighth- to 11th-grade, Russell said.

White students slip, too, but they're starting from a higher achievement level, with 71 percent meeting state benchmarks at the eighth grade and slipping to 67 percent at 11th grade for boys and 61 percent for girls.

"Are we fulfilling the promise of Brown?" Russell asked in a morning session that included an address from Marilyn Hutton, the staff attorney for the National Teacher's Association, and Robin Morris Collin, a professor at the Willamette University College of Law and a former University of Oregon law professor.

Afternoon sessions for youths, parents and educators addressed techniques for closing the gap.

The Spelman College question came up in a youth session presented by Kevin Fuller, education director at The Oregonian, and creator of a rites-of-passage program called Bridge Builders for African-American youths.

Spelman is a historically black women's college in Georgia, so the answer would be "alumna." Fuller pointed out that on SAT exams, the question would more likely be about 1939 Radcliffe graduates - a women's college familiar to white students, giving them a testing edge.

"Intelligence is not measured as much as exposure (to information) is," Fuller said. "I can create a test that my boys would pass that y'all would fail if I wanted to."

A test favoring Latinos could include a question on a little-known bit of California history: that a decade before the Supreme Court ruled on the Brown case, five Latino families successfully sued the state of California over laws that segregated their children from white students.

But Fuller didn't dwell long on testing systems that put different ethnic groups at a disadvantage.

He also extolled the virtues of responsibility, mutual support and hard work, for young men and women who want to achieve academically.

"This is the power you have, to create a system that supports you," he said.

That's not always easy to do, he acknowledged, especially when friends are urging you to kick back and have fun, instead of study.

"You can work hard now and play later or play now and work hard later," he said.

But all the encouragement and support in minority communities for achievement won't narrow the gap until the entire community cares, said Collin, the Willamette University professor.

"White people do not perceive that they have a stake in the outcome," she said. "Brown changed the doors that used to read whites only, but it's harder to change minds."