Seventeen-year-old Deryle Daniels Jr. serves on his school's junior class council, plays varsity football and basketball, and participates in the Youth Leadership Institute. A student at Chapel Hill (N.C.) High School, Daniels maintains a 3.8 grade-point average. He is one of four African American students in his AP U.S. history class this year, is one of three in junior honors English, and was the only African American student in his AP world history class last year.
While closing the widely publicized "achievement gap" is a high priority for the Minority Student Achievement Network (MSAN), an equally important item on the group's agenda is to understand what makes students like Daniels tick. Why do some African American and Latino students thrive while others-even those from well-educated, middle-class families-underachieve relative to their white and Asian American peers?
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