Students at Elmont Memorial Junior/Senior High School in a working class neighborhood of Nassau County, Long Island, can count on graduating on time with their friends and going on to college. So can students at the Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem. Students at both schools take the PSAT early and often, visit colleges each year, take Advanced Placement classes, study one or two foreign languages and have the opportunity to play a variety of sports. Courses taken successfully by students at these two schools are typical of those in many parts of the country, such as New Trier, Illinois, Brookline, Massachusetts, or Scarsdale, New York. Like students in those suburban schools, nearly all Elmont and Frederick Douglass students go to college. However, there are differences between Elmont and Frederick Douglass, on the one hand, and schools in wealthy suburbs, on the other. One difference is the per-student expenditure, which is considerably lower at Elmont and Frederick Douglass than in the suburbs. The other is that nearly all the students at Elmont and Frederick Douglass are black. In this article, the author discusses what distinguishes those high schools that serve black males academically especially well, graduating on time and ready for college work from other schools. The author visited Elmont Memorial Junior/Senior High School and Frederick Douglass Academy to obtain some insight.