From Detroit to Lansing, researchers, police and social workers have been trying to figure out what is happening to Michigan's boys, and why they are increasingly not in school but on the streets and in prison. Now we know why. Michigan's minority, urban boys are increasingly falling behind in academic achievement, making them among the nation's most at-risk children for a life of poverty and imprisonment.

In an effort to ensure racial diversity, the school system here in northern Westchester County is set up in an unusual way, its six school buildings divided not by neighborhood but by grade level. So all of the second and third graders in the Ossining Union Free School District attend the Brookside School. But some minority students, the black boys at Brookside, are set apart, in a way, by a special mentoring program that pairs them with black teachers for one-on-one guidance outside class, extra homework help, and cultural activities during the school day.