Black male adolescents face unique barriers in schools that may contribute to racial disparities in educational outcomes. Their social-cognitive strengths, however, influence their confidence to be academically successful despite these barriers. This study explored whether racial academic stereotypes and racial centrality were associated with and…

The overwhelming majority of published scholarship on urban high schools in the United States focuses on problems of inadequacy, instability, underperformance, and violence. Similarly, across all schooling contexts, most of what has been written about young men of color continually reinforces deficit narratives about their educational possibility.…

This article examines how stereotypes operate in the social construction of African Canadian males as "at risk" students. Cultural analysis and critical race theory are used to explain how the stereotypes of the youth as immigrant, fatherless, troublemaker, athlete, and underachiever contribute to their racialization and marginalization…

This article focuses on a small urban high school that developed a culture devoted to caring for their historically underserved students. Interviews with school founders, teachers, and alumni, as well as observations of classrooms and professional activities, revealed the high school attended to the affective needs of their students, which…

This study attempts to go beyond the individual-level factors that explain the underachievement of the Black male student and specifically focuses on the enormous growth of female-headed households. To this end, 2,849 middle school students in a large Midwestern school district in the United States were used. It was found that there is a…

This study examines whether neighborhood level collective socialization processes are racialized. It addresses whether Black and White students are affected differentially by their general neighborhood characteristics; whether the racial composition of positive and negative role models in a neighborhood shape student performance differently; and…

Many studies have been conducted on the achievement gap, with most findings pointing to how school and family variables affect Black students' achievement. Another body of work focuses on how social variables (i.e., peers) impact Black students' achievement, including how accusations of "acting White" affect the performance of Black students and…

Puerto Ricans are among the poorest and least well educated of Hispanic Americans and continue to drop out of school at a high rate. Recommends peer counseling programs, because there are few Puerto Rican teachers or other professionals to serve as role models. (DM)

Addresses the concept of underachievement among gifted black students from several perspectives and describes the extent to which gifted black students support the achievement ideology. Recommendations are made for ensuring that black students become more fully represented in programs for the gifted. (SLD)

Results of a study of the cognitive and affective development of 1,292 students, mostly Black or Hispanic, who had been retained more than once in the elementary grades indicate that retention and intervention must take place early to increase subject mastery. Curriculum improvement and teacher retraining are critical factors in improving minority…