Nationally, the high school graduation rates for Black and Latino males is estimated to be between 48 to 51%, and the actual numbers may be lower depending on the measures used by local school districts to calculate completion rates (Schott Foundation for Public Education, 2015). For Vietnamese, Hmong, Cambodians, Laotians and Pacific Islanders, the high school completion rate is near or below 50% (National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education [CARE], 2011; Teranishi, 2010; Teranishi et al., 2004). These unsettling high school graduation numbers contribute to the heightened sense of urgency for educators, policymakers, and philanthropies to continue to form strategic collaborations to examine the tensions and factors that contribute to individual student successes that can impact young men of color to transition from high school to college. Perez Huber et al., (2015) report that only 1 of 11 Latino males, 17 of 100 African American males, and 52 of 100 Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) males will earn Bachelor’s degrees. Perez Huber and others shared that AAPI males hold a larger share of those earning a Bachelor’s degree, and this number is deceiving because of the low academic achievement of some ethnic sub-groups previously mentioned. Given these educational conditions in high school graduation and college enrollment numbers, often times what is missing from this complicated story are the voices of young men of color to discuss their trajectories and hopes for their future.
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