Study: Minority Students Equally Driven

WASHINGTON (AP) April 20, 2004 -- Black and Hispanic students have as much desire to succeed in school as their white and Asian peers, says a study that challenges the idea that some minority groups are less focused on school.

Researchers for the Minority Student Achievement Network study said the findings released Tuesday, based on a survey of 40,000 high school students in 15 school districts across the country, show that black and Hispanic students are actually more likely than white or Asian students to report that their friends think it is very important to study hard and get good grades.

But nearly half of the black and Hispanic students surveyed said they understood their teachers' lessons about half the time or less, compared with 27 percent of white students and 32 percent of Asian students.

"How well students understand what they're being taught or what they're asked to read for school depends a great deal on how they are being taught and what kinds of supports are in place to encourage learning," said Allan Alson, superintendent of Evanston Township High School District 202 in Illinois and founder of MSAN.

The survey -- the first major study ever done by the suburban school network -- was conducted in the fall and winter of the 2000-01 school year. It also covered issues such as teacher-student relationships, students' understanding of classroom material, homework and peer pressure.

Study specifics

The network's districts, located in such communities as Evanston, Madison, Wisconsin, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, have reputations as high-achieving, high-support districts, but still report a common problem of having generally lower achievement results among black and Hispanic students. They formed their network four years ago to work to ensure high academic achievement for black and Hispanic students.

"The network believes that in order to bring about changes in student achievement levels, we must listen more carefully to what students are telling us, supply new resources and craft new strategies that will fundamentally alter school practice," Alson said.

The study found that black and Hispanic students often have fewer resources at home to help them succeed in school.

For instance, 57 percent of white students and 42 percent of Asian students said they have more than one computer at home, compared with 20 percent and 27 percent, for Hispanic and black students respectively.

The study also found that, on average, black and Hispanic students in the districts were more likely to live with one or neither parent, and their parents were less likely to have college degrees than the parents of white students.