Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males by Freeman Hrabowski III, Kenneth Matson, and Geoffrey L. Grieb Oxford University Press, 1998 New York 242 pages Hardcover: $26

Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males relates wonderful stories of parents striving successfully to raise academically high-achieving African American boys who are then encouraged to excel in college and subsequently go on to elite graduate and professional schools in medicine, mathematics, science, and engineering.

The book is filled with the actual words. gathered through extensive interviews, of mothers and fathers saying how they monitored their sons, homework (even when they didn't understand it). set limits on their after school activities, and had high expectations for their academic achievement. There is a "strong commitment to education" running through these families and a "supportive learning environment" in the home. The emphasis on the importance of education was present whether there was a two-parent family or a single-parent family, whether the family was middle class or working class.

Yet many obstacles hinder their achievement. For example, unlike their White counterparts. African American boys are often ridiculed by their peers for showing that they are "smart" in school. As a result, there is a tendency by African American boys not to speak out or excel in school. Additionally, there is the temptation to not choose a college major in the sciences or math. even though the boys may have good grades in these subjects, without encouragement or support from teachers and counselors.

Hence, the need for this book -- whose major purpose "is to identify strategies that parents [and] educators ... may wish to consider as they work with ... young African American males." The book is, more particularly, the story of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, operating since 1989 at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) "for talented African American males interested in research careers in science and engineering."

Although a strong case was made for focusing on males, women were admitted in 1990 and now make up half the students. The program was racially integrated in 1995, ostensibly as a result of the Podberesky ruling in 1994 by the U.S. Fourth Circuit Appellate Court, which found race specific scholarships to be illegal, and now the program is 80 percent African American. However, none of these major modifications is discussed in the book.

Meyerhoff has graduated more than one hundred students from UMBC who have gone on to great success in graduate schools of medicine and science. The program has achieved its success through "strong academic advising and personal counseling, emphasis on group study and peer support, appropriate tutoring and mentoring, [and] involvement with faculty in research and access to role models in science."

In the spirit of full disclosure, I should reveal that I am a member of the advisory committee for the Meyerhoff program. Obviously, I think it is a fine program. So the comments I make about the book should not be taken as criticism of the program.

There may be diplomatic reasons for doing so, but the book avoids making comparisons between the SAT scores of other students and those of Black students in the program. Indeed. for a research report, there is a conspicuous lack of charts and other statistical data in the study. What comparative data there are suggest that the parents of Meyerhoff students are atypical of the African American community. For example, one reference states that "over half [of the parents are] college educated"; and another notes, "our sample of mothers ... is more economically advantaged than most."

There is obviously nothing wrong with these attributes. But in suggesting things that parents can do to enhance learning, many of the activities -- "have books on tape available," "take children to the zoo [and to] different cities," "involve them in swimming, karate," and "buy them Legos" -- are out of reach of low-income parents.

It is important to realize that this is to a large extent a class phenomenon, a sensitive subject that is hardly touched in the book. In the state of Maryland, the average amount spent by schools for each pupil is $5,887. In Baltimore, Maryland, however, that total is $4,101. In the state of Michigan, 19 percent of the children live in poverty. But in Detroit, Michigan, 41 percent live in poverty -- and nearly all of them are Black.

And the gap between the well-off and the poor is increasing. In the midst of a "booming economy," the overwhelming majority of the Black poor are situated in increasing immiserization, are impacted in deteriorating and racially isolated schools, and are facing an increasingly disdainful majority population.

Let me be very clear. I think the Meyerhoff program is very good. It takes high-achieving males and females and provides financial and moral support that assures that they will succeed in college in math and science programs. But it is the view of this reviewer that to make a significant difference in the magnitude of the scientist population in the Black community will require much more than that.

In light of the diminution of these programs due to the adverse rulings on affirmative action (the MESA program in California and tile Meyerhoff and Banneker programs in Maryland have all become integrated), some additional strategies will have to be adopted.

Strategies such as Yale University psychologist James Comer's School Development Process (which achieved astonishing success with low-income African American elementary school children) and the national initiative by the High Scope Educational Research Foundation (which achieved similar success with talented disadvantaged high school youth) have great promise with larger numbers of lower-class children.

The Meyerhoff program does what it does very well -- within its range. But it cannot embrace more than it can deliver. The desperate needs of the African American community require a much more radical approach. But it can certainly embrace all those efforts, however modest, which are attempting to increase the number of African American scientists and engineers. This book does an exemplary job of describing one such effort.

Dr. Reginald Wilson is a visiting professor at the University of Texas-Austin and is a recently retired senior scholar for the American Council on Education.