A recent Census Bureau report has good news about African American education. In Educational Attainment in the United States, the Census Bureau reported that 86.2 percent of African Americans ages twenty-five to twenty-nine were high school graduates in 1997, continuing an upward trend in the educational attainment of African Americans that began in 1940.

For Whites between twenty-five and twenty-nine, the high school completion rate was 87.6 percent, meaning there is no statistically significant gap in the high school completion rates between African Americans and Whites. In other words, as far as high school completion is concerned, there is statistical parity between the youngest adult cohort of African Americans and Whites.

My first reaction to this data was pleasure. It is not that this smaller gap is unexpected -- it has been closing for decades. It is just that when we look at the distance we have come, this small gap is amazing. In 1940, for example, 26 percent of Whites but only 7 percent of African Americans over age twenty-five were high school graduates. Considering the youngest group of adults, those twenty-five to twenty-nine, 41.2 percent of Whites, compared to 12.3 percent of African Americans, were high school graduates. In a fifty-seven year period, the number of Whites graduating high school has more than doubled, while the number of African Americans has increased sevenfold. No matter how you slice it, that's progress!

Of course, high school attainment doesn't mean much in a high-tech world where more education than high school is needed. So I'm hoping that educators will not use these data to suggest that enough has been done to improve African American educational attainment.

However, I've already heard that line run by one of my conservative counterparts in the world of punditry. Eventually, she said, all the gaps will narrow. You don't need affirmative action or special programs to help.

She could not be more wrong. Although the gap has narrowed with college completion, proportionately, twice as many Whites as African Americans finish college. According to this latest data, for twenty-five- to twenty-nine-year-olds, 28.9 percent of Whites and 14.1 percent of African Americans have completed college (the college completion rate is much higher -- at 40 percent for Asian Americans; it is also a somewhat lower 10 percent for Hispanics).

While these numbers are slightly higher for young adults than for the overall population, the success we have had in graduating teens from high school has not translated into success in getting high school graduates of color into -- and out of -- college.

What role does affirmative action play? It identifies potential students, provides them with financial aid, and develops programs to support them through their undergraduate years. Affirmative action may shape the admissions process, especially when the process has inherent biases that result in the kind of enrollment rates we can measure -- such as African Americans constituting some 8 percent of the population in California but less than 2 percent of the admitted freshman class.

There is a difference between high school completion and college completion. For one thing, high school attendance is compulsory. High school attendance is also free. At the college level, on the other hand, tuition can range into the tens of thousands of dollars a year. While there is quality, low-cost higher education through the public universities in most states (except for the University of the District of Columbia, which has endured cuts and the indifference of Congress and the city's financial control board for at least three years), many states are slamming doors on those who have completed high school but fail to meet their "requirements" for matriculation.

Why do so many students of color fail to meet these requirements? One might only look at the quality of their high school education and the resources available for their education, which sometimes suggests that even when equivalent numbers of African Americans and Whites graduate from high school, educational parity has not yet been attained. When inner-city high schools (and twenty-eight urban school districts educate the majority of African American youngsters) have lower per-pupil spending than their surrounding suburbs, is there any surprise in differences in achievement?

I know folks who will read this column as one long whining, lamenting complaint. It is not. It is both a celebration and an examination of where we are now. Any time gaps close, it is incumbent on those who fight for change to acknowledge that change happens. However, it is also important to analyze what change means.

In the realm of high school completion, the closing of the gap between Blacks and Whites means that most Americans now have a basic educational certification -- and perhaps, basic educational skills. This is an improvement for both African Americans and Whites over fifty-five years ago.

At the same time, the attainment of this basic certification means less now than it did three generations ago.

Thus, we must now turn our attention to the accessibility of postsecondary education, both at the college and postgraduate level, and in vocational and technical education. And, at the risk of "bean counting," we must look to close gaps in attainment at those educational levels as well. To do otherwise would be to fall short of the mighty goals some visionaries articulated when they began the struggle for civil rights in the educational arena.