Forthcoming Mellon Foundation study documents activities that lead to African American success on standardized tests

Only about 5,000 of the roughly 224,000 students who score 1200 or better on the SAT are African American. And until now, very little has been known about them and their educational experiences.

A forthcoming study by the Mellon Foundation, in conjunction with the Urban Institute, begins the process of finding out more about African American students who score well on these tests. The study will be an eye-opener for those who believe high-scoring Black students are identical, experientially, to their White peers.

It finds, for example, that high-scoring African American students have fewer advantages than their White counterparts. They are also more likely to come from families with lower incomes and with fewer college degrees than Whites with similar scores. And although the biggest concentration of Blacks with high scores attend school in the close-in suburbs of large cities, in general high-scoring Black students are much more likely than their White peers to attend school in central cities --where educational opportunities are often more limited than in the suburbs.

The study "makes a point that has really been lost," says Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, professor at Stanford University's School of Education.

"Black kids who score well do so against greater odds than what White students have to face," she says. "There's been this idea in the press that Black kids have equal opportunities, don't measure up, and still want extra opportunities in the form of affirmative action. But Black kids are achieving against the odds."

This means, according to the study, that "those charged with selecting entering classes for prestigious colleges and universities need to look beyond the numbers -- students' SAT scores -to understand the challenges that they may have faced in becoming top performers."

The study's author, Stephanie Bell-Rose of the Mellon Foundation, says she is hopeful that selective colleges will take these findings seriously.