Complete Coverage

Mixed Heritage Said to Present Complex Issues

Multiracial Children Attracting Interest as Visibility Increases

With Barack Obama making history by becoming the United States' first mixed-race president, his inauguration is calling attention to the nation's growing multiracial population, whose youngest members are showing up with increasing frequency at schoolhouse doors.

Yet while the growth of the U.S. population of children with mixed-race backgrounds has been long in coming, little is known about how such children are doing in the classroom. Few studies have examined the distinctive challenges they may face growing up—challenges like those Mr. Obama chronicled in his own best-selling memoir. And even fewer have tracked the educational progress of mixed-race children.

In the 2000 U.S. Census, which was the first in which people could check off more than one racial category on their census forms, 6.8 million people were identified as multiracial, and a majority of them were under 18. In at least 10 states, in fact, more than a quarter of the school-age children...