(Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel greets students after a graduation ceremony.)
Chicago’s Urban Prep Academy has done it again.
For the fifth straight year the all-male charter school has had all of it’s graduating seniors accepted into four-year colleges and universities.
The celebrated charter school has received national acclaim for providing their students with the necessary skills to be “college bound.” Last spring, almost 250 of the students received college acceptance letters before they could cross the graduation stage. Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel has taken special interest in the success of the charter school, even delivering the commencement speech for the 2014 graduation ceremony.
When seniors are accepted into a college, the Urban Prep tradition calls for them to trade their red tie for a red and gold one. For some students the tie exchange takes on an even bigger meaning.
“The tie represents to me moving on from a boy to becoming a young man and actually doing something with my life,” said graduating senior Dumar Harris.
Though there are many people who applaud the accomplishments of Urban Prep’s program, there are some detractors who point to the fact that there are some students who attend the school but don’t graduate because of transferring or dropping out. Urban Prep’s CEO and founder Tim King said those instances shouldn’t tarnish the achievements of the hundreds of graduates.
“Urban Prep is not for everyone, and those students may leave us,” King said. “But the fact that some students choose to leave us should not be used as a weapon against the students who have chosen to stay and have achieved this incredible accomplishment.”