This report documents recent national progress in advancing the achievements of elementary-aged minority children, the potential for replicable whole-school reform designs to contribute to this advancement, and the individual, classroom, and school characteristics that distinguish those minority students who attain high levels of achievement. The primary focus of the analyses is on the progress of Latino and African American students who begin their academic careers at relatively high achievement levels. The analyses are based on data from the national study, "Prospects", and its companion study of exemplary school programs, "Special Strategies." As results from other national studies have indicated, the results of this study suggest that minority students are poorly represented among the nation's highest achievers. Results suggest that high-achieving students of all racial/ethnic groups, who are from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds, begin a process of disengagement from school from the time they begin first grade. It also appears that the achievement of boys is more likely to suffer than that of girls. Analyses of the "Special Strategies" data indicate that replicable, whole-school reform designs hold considerable promise for advancing the learning of all African American students within high poverty schools. Findings also suggest that many aspects of schools and classrooms that are associated with minority high achievement are readily alterable. Schools and families can work toward promoting many of the individual attributes that tended to characterize the most successful minority students from the study. Two appendixes contain student-level and school-level composite scores for the study questionnaire and summaries of the hierarchical model analyses of achievement and engagement. (Contains 53 tables, 17 figures, and 75 references.) (SLD)