The Educated Reporter: Male Minorities Succeed in School, But Few Notice

The Educated Reporter: Male Minorities Succeed in School, But Few Notice:

Male Minorities Succeed in School, But Few Notice

Professor Sean Harper of University of Pennsylvania
 (Credit: Mikhail Zinshteyn, EWA)

Why aren’t the best and brightest minority students landing at elite colleges? Anew study suggests we’re asking the wrong question.

In his research onachievement by black males in higher education, University of Pennsylvania Prof. Shaun Harper – director of the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education – didn't try to answer why their college failure rate is so high. Instead, he set out to see what could be learned from the students who were succeeding. As a follow-up to that work, Harper has focused on young men poised to make the leap into higher education.

Harper and his team of research assistants recently interviewed 350 New York City high school students of color – just over half were black, and 43 percent were Latino. Roughly half the students came from single-parent homes, and close to three-quarters of them would be the first in their family to attend college. Most of