I am reporting to you on a soon-to-be-released study conducted for the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative, a sub-group to the National Center for Education Statistics. The study attempts to do three things: * Review the extant research on the impediments to greater academic success for underrepresented students; * Make sense of the ways that intervention programs attempt to address these impediments through their programmatic strategies; and to * Assess the extent to which these strategies are successful in overcoming the impediments and helping more students to go on to college. Most of the conclusions that are drawn on the effectiveness of programs are based on evaluation studies we located that systematically (some more rigorously than others) assessed program effectiveness. Very few intervention programs conduct the kind of evaluations that allow us to make judgments about their effectiveness. Major impediments to higher academic achievement among underrepresented students are: 1. Inequalities of familial cultural and social capital. That is, poor families and those from underrepresented groups are much less likely to have sufficient familiarity with the social and educational systems, and to have access to important information and resource networks, to adequately represent their children's interests. 2. Inequality of resources in neighborhoods and communities. Poor communities have fewer local resources such as libraries, parks and museums, and fewer adult role models, to support the academic aspirations of underrepresented youth. 3. Lack of peer support for academic achievement. Black and Hispanic students are more likely than others to have peers who interpret being a good student as "acting white" and therefore ostracizing these high performers from important social supports. Peers who shun academic achievement are common in poor, inner city and rural schools where students of color feel systematically excluded from white, middle class society. 4. Racism. Racism is still a significant factor in educational mobility for students of color. Although most Americans no longer concede that they believe black and Hispanic students are innately intellectually inferior, they do attribute these students' school problems largely to their own lack of desire to do better, rather than to structural factors that might impede their advancement. Thus, most middle- class voters are reluctant to vote for policies that would ameliorate vestiges of racism. Racism also works to undermine the self-confidence of students of color and can cause them to doubt their abilities and thus remove themselves from academic competition with mainstream students. 5. Inequalities in K-12 schools, including unequal distribution of well-qualified teachers. Poor children tend to go to poor schools that are attended largely by other poor children. These schools, largely in the overcrowded urban centers, have been shown to enjoy fewer resources and less qualified teachers, and have more disciplinary problems and higher turnover of both students and staff. They also offer less rigorous coursework and generally have lower aspirations for their students. Students who attend these schools are more likely to finish school unprepared for postsecondary study than are students from suburban schools, and they are less likely to be competitive for admission to selective colleges because their test scores reflect less rigorous preparation. 6. Segregation of black and Latino students. Black and Latino students are increasingly likely to be educated in segregated schools that provide fewer opportunities for inter-racial contact and the development of personal and social networks that can increase cultural capital and promote social mobility. 7. Poor high school counseling. Underrepresented students are more likely to attend crowded, inner-city public schools where the quality of counseling is poor, and students are neither adequately informed of their postsecondary options nor helped to achieve them. Inadequate counseling also contributes significantly to the tracking of underrepresented students into noncollege preparatory coursework that impoverishes their education and limits their postsecondary opportunities. 8. Low expectations and aspirations. Underrepresented students are provided less encouragement by teachers who may harbor doubts about their abilities and thereby contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy of underachievement. These students are also more likely than middle class white and Asian students to have low or unrealistic, aspirations for themselves. When aspirations are defined as what a student plans to do, as opposed to what he or she would like to do, researchers find that they are less likely than others to plan for higher education. This is critically important because true aspirations are powerful predictors of educational outcomes. 9. High drop-out rates. Underrepresented students, and especially Latinos, are much more likely to drop out of school than other students, effectively foreclosing postsecondary opportunities for most. Dropping out is a function of both push and pull factors. At least some significant portion of the drop-out problem can be attributed to school practices that act to remove "difficult" students from school. 10. Limited financial resources. Limited financial resources remain a powerful impediment to postsecondary education for many low-income, underrepresented students. In spite of a federal commitment first launched with the Higher Education Act of 1965 to eliminate the financial barriers to higher education for qualified students, low-income students with high test scores are significantly less likely to pursue higher education than high-income students with similar test scores. The increasing shift in financial aid policy from grants to loans leads to a fear of incurring debt that cannot be repaid or that places an excessive burden on the family. Furthermore, concerns about forgoing income that could relieve family financial stresses during the long years of study can persuade some students to reject higher education altogether. Conclusions about the effectiveness of programs in addressing these impediments: 1. The most comprehensive programs do appear to be reasonably effective at increasing the college-going rate (several doubled the rate) for targeted students (a lucky few); but 2. This is mostly a result of moving students into community college who would not otherwise have gone, or moving students who would otherwise have gone to community college into less selective four-year colleges-all of which is good, but 3. The programs do not appear, for the most part, to move kids from less selective to highly selective colleges (one of the chief concerns and goals of the University of California, for example). 4. This is largely because even the most comprehensive programs do not show significant differences in academic achievement measured by test scores or grades; either they do not measure this, or their measures do not show dramatic differences against controls. 5. We also do not know much about what happens to the students once they go to college, but based on data from the U.S. Department of Education we have reason to be concerned. 6. The single biggest problem that these programs face is attrition; only about one-third to one-half of students who begin the programs appear to "complete" the program (though what constitutes completion is often murky). 7. It appears that to the extent that the programs are "add- ons" to normal school routine and content, they cannot substantially change the course of a student's academic outcomes. There is a critical need to integrate the programs into the core of the schooling experience, i.e., reform the core educational experience to reflect the strategies and goals of the best programs and make the schools these students attend look more like the best prep schools (which is what these programs often try to re-create). These strategies include: * High quality instruction; * Relationship with a key adult who monitors and guides the student over a long period of time; * An intervention that extends across the educational system ( K-16); * Paying attention to the cultural background of the student and incorporating this into the intervention (Many programs note that they are more successful with one group of students than another. We think this is related to the background and expertise of the staff and the extent to which the program targets the specific needs of different groups); * Providing a supportive peer group; and * Financial assistance. Programs that incorporate these features are likely to increase college-going, but alone they do not appear to be able to substantially increase competitive eligibility for schools like UC. 8. Finally, there is little attention to cost in these studies. Programs vary wildly with respect to per-student cost, with no appreciable relationship to outcomes. Most comprehensive programs are very expensive and thus serve only a handful of students. We need to explore the cost-benefit trade-offs for different intervention strategies and different types of students.