Let's be blunt. North Carolina high schools are not serving our poor and minority students well. Only about half of black, Hispanic, Native American and poor students are able to perform at grade level in English, mathematics, science, history and social studies.

In 2006, Gov. Mike Easley commissioned a High School Resource Allocation Study by education specialists Gary Henry of UNC-Chapel Hill and Charles Thompson of East Carolina University, asking them whether North Carolina could improve student achievement in its low-performing high schools by spending education dollars more efficiently.

Ever since the state Supreme Court issued its Leandro decision in 2004, state officials have known that the schools they are responsible for are in violation of Articles I and IX of the state constitution. These articles mandate that the state provide every student with a sound, basic public school education.

For four years this legal requirement has been explicit, while thousands of children of every race have lost hope, been suspended, expelled and pushed out. Each one had good reason to hire a lawyer and head to court. The Henry-Thompson Report, based on a study of North Carolina's 337 high schools and presented recently to the State Board of Education, provides some ways for our state leaders to stop breaking the law.

The report isolates two ways to improve learning and raise test scores.

* First, the only allocation that is systematically associated with better academic performance is money spent on regular classroom instruction. Line items that fall under regular classroom instruction include compensation for teachers, teacher assistants, tutors and substitutes, as well as instructional supplies, textbooks and library and media services.

Henry and Thompson calculate that if per pupil spending increased by $1,000 per student in low-performing high schools, and the increase were spent to support regular classroom instruction, the average test score gap between high- and low-performing high schools would close by 20 percent.

* Second, segregation hurts achievement and should therefore be avoided. Schools with high concentrations of minority students, low-income students and low-performing students are, by definition, schools whose students are segregated from opportunities to learn.

The report found that school districts could reap immediate gains in student learning by significantly reducing concentrations of low-skilled and low-income students. The very same student who attends a segregated, low-income school, on average, will not achieve what she would achieve in a school that enrolled a diverse population with more affluent, white and higher-performing students.

The Wake County school board's wise policy of ceilings on the number of poor and low-performing students in individual schools is a national model for this basic educational principle.

To be clear, the report does not say an African-American student can succeed only if he is educated with white kids. The report says no student, regardless of her race or class, does very well when her school lacks the best teachers. Nor is any student better off if the majority of his schoolmates lack access to caring adults, good health care, adequate housing and safe neighborhoods. Racial and economic segregation piles up layers of harm for any student who experiences it.

The UNC Center for Civil Rights recently looked at poverty concentrations in high schools in North Carolina's six largest districts. Poor and minority students in the districts' high-poverty schools had the least access to licensed teachers, much less to nationally board-certified teachers.

A well-planned conspiracy could hardly wreak more havoc on the academic achievement of poor and minority youth.

It is time to face the truth. Disadvantaged youth need more dollars in classroom instruction. They need highly qualified teachers. They need racial and economic diversity in their public schools -- while we all work to diversify housing and neighborhoods. New policies should penalize districts that engage in a sinister choice to isolate minority, low-income and struggling students from their more advantaged peers.

Forty years ago, on his last night with us, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us that when fighting for justice nothing would be more tragic than to turn back now. The Leandro ruling is one example that this is true. Its creation of a fundamental right to an effective education bears out another of Dr. King's prophesies, that the moral arc of the universe bends inexorably toward justice.

For the past two years, the N.C. NAACP's almost 20,000 members from 100 local branches have organized, marched and lobbied all over North Carolina for well-funded, high-quality, diverse schools for all children. The Henry-Thompson findings, while not surprising, provide hard evidence for our position.

Leandro is a matter of justice. The NAACP, joined by many other good people, will agitate, litigate and legislate to bring justice to our children, every one of them precious.

(Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is president of the state chapter of the NAACP.)