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.

"It's not enough to intensify recruitment," she says, adding that what that usually does is reshuffle the same students. "Rarely does intensified recruitment mean the pool of students has expanded."

One of the things she says highly selective colleges should do is to communicate "exactly what is needed to compete" and to develop programs to deepen the pool of qualified African American applicants.

"The college admissions game is changing," she says. "We now have more concentrated resources for college preparation."

Bell-Rose is referring to the increased use of summer academic programs, Saturday academies, and other academic enrichment opportunities as well as the increasing use of early admissions. Most of these are used disproportionately by those who are already in a good position to compete for spots at the more competitive colleges -- that is, those who tend to be affluent and White.

"This is cause for concern about the preparation of all minority kids -- not just Black kids," Bell-Rose says.

The study used data collected by The College Board, which administers the SAT. The College Board data is very extensive, deriving from surveys filled out by every student taking the SAT. Data on African American students who are otherwise academically accomplished is not available in the same kind of detail. Scores on the SAT are widely used by college admissions offices as a way to sort through the college admissions process, although some colleges depend on them more than others.

One of the study's major findings was that all high performers, Black and White, take rigorous courses. Most take calculus, and even more take honors English. This tallies with previous research which indicates that when students take more rigorous coursework they tend to do better on the SAT and on the ACT -- another standardized test used primarily in the South and the Midwest.

This is especially true for Black students, says Darling-Hammond, because "there is a body of research that [African American] kids continue to be tracked out of these courses, even when they have high grades and test scores. That's a function of how school systems allocate scarce resources, how counselors see these kids, and how aggressive parents are in demanding that their children have access to these courses."

The study also found that although the vast majority of Blacks with high test scores attend public school they represent only 4 percent of the African American males and 3 percent of African American females attending public schools.

In contrast, there is a correlation between attending private and Catholic school and scoring high on the SAT. In private school, 16 percent of African American boys and 21 percent of the girls score 1200 or more. In Catholic school, 7 percent of male Blacks and 4 percent of female Blacks achieve these scores.

Part of the reason offered by the study for that discrepancy is that Catholic and private schools tend to require all students to take a rigorous college-preparatory curriculum, while many public schools do not.

A large part of the "beneficial effect is through student course-taking and extracurricular activities," the study says.

"It's important, but not surprising," says Dr. Michael T. Nettles, professor of education at the University of Michigan and head of the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute of The College Fund/UNCF, about the gap between public and private school students.

Even aside from the course requirements, Nettles says, private school students are often more focused on academics.

"When you look at television watching, you get a reduction in [private] schools," he notes, "also more reading by the students."

The study found significant differences between African American and White high scorers in terms of what they did outside the classroom. Blacks with high scores work fewer part-time jobs than Whites with high scores, and generally participate less in extracurricular activities -- with the exception of what the study calls "intellectually stimulating" activities such as honor society, computer clubs, and instrumental music classes. Lower scoring Black students spent more time working and participating in junior ROTC.

Black students who score high on the SAT tend to do less well than their White counterparts in terms of their grades and class standing in high school -- a finding that Bell-Rose finds puzzling. Although she has no explanation for it, she says it corresponds to the fact Blacks with high scores do somewhat less well in terms of grades and class standing in college as well.

This phenomenon has been the subject of other research, including that done by Nettles, who is currently working on a study for Mellon on why African American students drop out of college at higher rates than White students.

Another finding of the Mellon study is that high-scoring African American students -- particularly girls -- have very high aspirations for their education. For example, 32 percent of Black girls who score above 1300 on the SAT say they will aim for a Ph.D., compared to only about one-fifth of African American boys and White students.

African Americans with high scores also apply to slightly more competitive schools than their White counterparts, but keep to a fairly narrow range of schools. Only about sixty universities received the SAT scores of one hundred or more African American students with high scores. For the male African American with high scores, of the most popular schools, twenty-two were private schools, seventeen public universities, six were Ivy League, and five were historically Black colleges and universities. For females, the top schools included twenty-six private universities, thirteen public universities, six Ivy League schools, and five historically Black colleges and universities.

The study did not follow the students to find out where they attended college but only where they sent their SAT scores.

Because the pool of high-scoring applicants is so shallow, the foundation report says, "colleges and universities have a clear stake in improving Blacks' pre-college preparation."

RELATED ARTICLE: Key Findings from the Mellon Foundation Study

* African American students who score high on the SAT come disproportionately from the South, from private and Catholic schools, from the suburbs, and from families with less income than their White counterparts.

* African American students who score high on the SAT tend not to participate in non-academic extra-curricular activities -- except for the boys, who are active in sports -- and tend not to work part-time jobs as much as their White counterparts. They are, however, engaged in what the study calls "intellectually stimulating" activities, such as participating in the honor society, computer club, journalism, and instrumental music.

* African American students who score high on the SAT take rigorous course work. Most take calculus and even more take honors English.

* On average, African American students who score high on the SAT live in neighborhoods with higher percentages of poor children, single parent households, adults without college degrees, high school dropouts, and non-English speakers than their White counterparts.