- that many minorities grow up in environments where academic failure isn't condemned

But minority drop-out rates, test scores, and other empirical data tell only part of the story. What the information doesn't show is the lack of support systems available to minority students, many of whom are products of economically disadvantaged school districts. To not recognize and address these facts, to lay the blame purely on a cultural phenomenon, is to deny many students the chance to achieve.

Think, for instance, of two men who start their 20s with an equal amount of financial capital. Within six years, one has completed his university degree and is well on his way to establishing a career, while the other has finished less than two years of undergraduate work and has few real prospects for advancement. More than money determines their fates. Personal qualities — self-motivation, discipline, capacity to learn from one's own mistakes and others' examples, tenacity, honesty, empathy, integrity, prudence, and proper deference to those who can help one prosper — matter as well. But these q

While those supporting standards pay much lip service to increased equity, very few are facing up to the hard truth that achieving high standards for all students will require massive changes to the nation's public schools--and a level of public commitment to school improvement that seems to be lacking.

• Repeated experiences of suspension and expulsion tell students who are members of language, ethnic, or racial minorities, or recent immigrants that schools just don't want them.

• Teachers hold lower expectations for students on the basis of their race, culture, or economic status--expectations that are quickly internalized by young children who soon decide they are not as smart as other children and can't succeed in school.

• Children with primary languages other than English lack comprehensible instruction in a variety of subjects to allow them to reach the same academic standards as children whose first language is English.

ualities do not simply materialize from thin air; society must foster them. The young man who has never been taught the value of prudence or has never had to exercise patience is unlikely to set demanding goals for himself and is therefore unlikely to, as the English say, "get on" in life.

To succeed in college, migrant students must (1) complete high school with adequate preparation for college, (2) apply and be accepted to college, (3) find scholarships or other funding to attend, and (4) progress through college to graduation. Being a migrant complicates these basic steps because of frequent moves, poverty, gaps in previous schooling, and language barriers. Migrant students also confront societal and institutional barriers, due to ethnic differences and community isolation. Despite these challenges, some migrant students attend and graduate from colleges and universities. This Digest discusses common stumbling blocks and ways c

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EDUCATION Decades, , Western Hemisphere, Eastern European, United Sowell, Hungarian Jews, Europeanized African-origin, Europe's Jewish, migrant students, factors including, public schools, standards students, poor schools, colleges universities, children poor, academic failure, american blacks, school •,