This article was originally published in the October 17, 1999 edition of The New York Times © 1999 The New York Times Download the complete report "Reaching the Top: A Report of the National Task Force on Minority High Achievement (in PDF format)

Report Calls for New Focus on Aid for Minority Students By JODI WILGOREN A TASK FORCE OF PROMINENT EDUCATORS has found that the performance gap between black, Hispanic and American Indian students and their white and Asian counterparts persists across the socioeconomic spectrum, from kindergarten through graduate school, according to a report being released Sunday. After decades of discussion about the most economically and educationally disadvantaged students, the College Board's National Task Force on Minority High Achievement has collected the results of an array of research showing that even in middle-class suburbs and elite colleges, African-Americans, Hispanics and American Indians lag behind, failing to make the honor roll or earn similar plaudits in proportion to non-Hispanic whites and Asians. In sounding the alarm, the task force calls for a strategy of "affirmative development" that would emphasize minority performance at all levels rather than focus on enrollment in colleges and universities. The College Board plans to spend up to $10 million in the next decade researching and replicating programs that produce high-achieving black and Hispanic students. "Chronic underachievement among minority students is one of the most critical problems facing our country today," said Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, a national association of educational institutions that administers the SAT and other standardized tests. "It is particularly troubling because we are not just talking about disadvantaged youngsters. Even minority students from relatively wealthy families with well-educated parents do not typically perform as well as white and Asian students from similar backgrounds." Among the most significant findings in the report, which defines minority students as black, Hispanic or American Indian, as opposed to whites and Asian-Americans, are these: -- Only 10 percent of the 4th-, 8th- and 12th-grade students who scored at the highest level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests in reading, math and science were minorities. -- Minorities earned only 13 percent of the nation's bachelor's degrees, 11 percent of professional degrees and 6 percent of the doctoral degrees in 1995, when they made up about 30 percent of the under-18 population. -- At mainstream colleges and universities, minorities earn significantly lower grades than white and Asian students who scored similarly on entrance exams. -- An education gender gap is particularly acute among minorities: Over all, men earned 45 percent of all bachelor's degrees in the mid-1990s, but among black students, only 36 percent were awarded to men. "These differences in educational outcomes contribute to large disparities in life chances," says the report, called "Reaching the Top." Noting that minorities will make up 40 percent of Americans under 18 by 2030, it adds, "The rapid changes that are taking place in the racial and ethnic composition of the nation bring a new sense of urgency to this work." The recommendations are broad and somewhat vague, but the task force members, who include Henry Louis Gates Jr., head of the Afro-American Studies Department of Harvard University, and James P. Comer, of Yale University, an expert on children, lend a seriousness to the work. The 31-member group is headed by Edmund W. Gordon, a Yale professor emeritus of psychology, and Eugene H. Cota-Robles, professor emeritus of biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. The report calls on high schools and elementary schools to share information on programs that improve minority achievement, and urges collaboration between minority colleges and mainstream institutions as well as between community colleges and four-year schools. For colleges, the task force recommends that officials not only look at grades and class rank, but also at course selection and research projects. It says financial aid should be geared to high achievement rather than just graduation. At the elementary and secondary levels, the task force urges the Department of Education and individual districts to make high achievement among minorities a top priority in both research and public policy. The report also calls for an expansion of supplementary education opportunities, like math clubs and science fairs, to serve minorities and asks businesses and foundations to devote money to these programs. The report highlights several examples where minorities have achieved greater success, including a program at the University of Maryland that recruits top black math students, and one at the University of California at Davis that gives extra support to biology majors. Both resulted in unusual numbers of minorities graduating with honors. "If we can do it in biology in one place and in math in another place," Cota-Robles said in an interview, "can we find ways to replicate it?"