Promises kept : raising Black boys to succeed in school and in life

Summary: An unprecedented guide to helping black boys achieve success at every stage of their lives--at home, at school, and in the world Black boys face a daunting array of challenges--and the surprising fact is that those challenges appear regardless of how wealthy or poor their parents are. All black boys must confront and surmount the "achievement gap": a divide that shows up in our sons' test scores, but also in their social and emotional development, their physical well-being, and their outlook on life. As children, our sons score as high on cognitive tests as their peers, but at some point in their young lives, the gap emerges. Why? This is the question Joe Brewster and Michele Stephenson sought to answer when their own son, Idris, began struggling in a new school. As they filmed their son's experiences for their award-winning documentary American Promise, they also set out to discover the reasons for Idris's struggles, struggles he shared with black boys everywhere. Their investigation led them to meet an array of researchers who had not only identified the reasons for the gap, but had come up with practical, innovative solutions to close it.