Monday marked the 50th anniversary of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled "separate but equal" is inherently unequal when it comes to a child's education.

But the nation still has a long way to go to ensure all children have access to high-quality education, said Jeanetta Williams, president of the Salt Lake City branch of the NAACP.

Williams, who recently attended a national NAACP educational summit in Topeka, Kan., said Monday that equal educational opportunity is the "heartbeat of democracy."

Citing figures from the new "Brown 50 Years and Beyond: Promise and Progress Advocacy Report," Williams said Utah mirrors national trends that indicate the promise of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which outlawed school segregation, has not been met.

Less money is spent on low-income students, many schools are segregated by race and teachers are poorly trained to deal with diversity, she said.

In its Call to Action plan, the NAACP has outlined 13 areas of improvement for the nation's education that will start in 2005, said Edward Lewis Jr., president of the NAACP's tri-state conference for Idaho, Nevada and Utah.

Utah is participating in the plan. The items of highest priority are resource equality, teacher training and high stakes testing, Lewis said.

Williams said the NAACP is concerned about high dropout rates among black and Hispanic students and is looking at ways to keep them in school. She said achievement gaps between white and minority students have widened since the mid-1980s.

"In order for students of color to obtain jobs with adequate pay, they need to get that education," she said.

Richard Gomez, educational equity coordinator for the State Office of Education, said Utah's schools are working to close that gap through achievement programs targeted at minority, low-income and female students. He said the state is switching to a more accurate method for reporting dropout rates, which could be close to 40 percent for minorities.

"We don't have the exasperated problem yet as other states have simply because of the (fewer) number of ethnic minority students, but our ethnic minority students are having similar problems" to those in other states, Gomez said.

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