By Matthew E. Milliken

mmilliken@heraldsun.com; 419-6684

DURHAM -- The National Education Association grant awarded to Durham schools is meant to improve the test scores and college and job readiness of black males.

"Too many are in academic trouble," school board Chairwoman Minnie Forte-Brown said Tuesday. "Too many are held back a grade. Too many fail to enroll in rigorous coursework. Too many drop out, and their scores are among the lowest of any demographic. That has to change."

The six schools involved in the new grant have large populations of black students and significant gaps in scores between black and white students.

Two groups of schools in two different K-12 feeder patterns are participating in the grant. They are Eno Valley Elementary, Chewning Middle and Northern High schools and Fayetteville Street Elementary, Lowe's Grove Middle and Hillside High schools.

The percentage of black students at the schools ranges from 48.5, at Chewning, to 87.4, at Hillside, according to data that was published in grant material. Every school but Northern and Chewning is more than two-thirds black.

Five of the schools have from 62 to 79 percent of their students who are eligible for free and reduced-price meals, a commonly accepted poverty measure. Northern is the exception at 40.3 percent.

Data from 2008-09 show that black students' test scores in core subject areas are often less than two-thirds those of white students at the six schools and sometimes much lower. For instance, while all white students at Fayetteville Street were deemed proficient in math, only 34.1 percent of blacks were. At Chewning, 61 percent of white students and 21.6 percent of black students passed state reading tests. By comparison, 47.6 percent of Hispanic Fayetteville pupils passed math tests and 47.6 percent of Hispanic Chewning students passed reading tests.

Four of the six grant schools have annual teacher turnover rates of 20 percent or higher, compared to 18 percent for the district and 13.3 percent for the state.

Districtwide, black males comprise the largest single group of Durham public school students. In 2007-08, 8,876 students representing 27.1 percent of Durham enrollment were black males. Black females were a close second at 26.8 percent.

About 70 percent of dropouts were black in 2007-08. That year, 84 percent of students given short-term suspensions and 67 percent of those given long-term suspensions were black. Black male students alone accounted for more than half of suspensions in both categories.

About 55 percent of black male students graduated from high school on time in 2008, compared to 86.5 percent of white males.

Gaps between black and white students have long existed at the national and state levels, according to a paper prepared last year by a UNC Chapel Hill class working on the grant application. In North Carolina, the achievement gap was about 27 points in 2000 and 33.5 points in 2006.