The constant reminder that there are more black men in prison than on college campus is nauseating, sickening and tiring to most black people. But one all-male, all-black high school on Chicago’s South Side is countering that horrible statistic by graduating all 107 of its African American seniors and getting the young men accepted into college.
The Urban Prep Academy for Young Men in Chicago’s Englewood community — one of the most notorious neighborhoods in the city — managed to get their black men accepted into 72 colleges around the nation.
But you are wrong if you believe that the school was happy about graduating all their seniors or sending them to college. That’s not even close to the goal. The goal of the prep school is to get all of 107 black high school graduates to become 107 black college graduates, says Evan Lewis, Urban Prep Academy’s vice president for institutional advancement, in talking with the Chicago Tribune.
“We are not just committed to getting our students through high school, we are committed to getting them through college. We are going to be a constant presence in their lives and give them the support that a lot of folks don’t have when they go to college,” Lewis says.
What’s even more remarkable is this fact: only 4 percent of the graduates could read at their grade level when they were freshman. Moreover, 82 percent of these black males came from low-income families. But founder and CEO Tim King knew he could transform their lives.
“I never had a doubt that we would achieve this goal. Every single person we hired knew from the day one that this is what we do: We get our kids in to college,” King says.
This is how King did it: before the male students even started their first freshman class four years ago, they were assigned a college counselor. Then they visited the esteemed Northwestern University. Also, because of their poor reading skills, they took double periods of English and “spent 72,000 more minutes in the classroom than their peers at regular CPS schools,” the Tribune reports.
King says since the college graduation rate for black men is also very low, the school’s counselors will provide comprehensive support throughout their college years. –terry shropshire
