I've been meaning to touch on this subject since I first heard about it several weeks ago. Urban Prep, a public, all-male charter school with a predominantly African-American student body, claims that 100% of its graduating seniors have been accepted to 4-year colleges. In the time that the story was made public, there have been some naysayers inquiring about the legitimacy of the claim. It has been suggested that not all students who started with the class of 2011 are finishing with their classmates. It has also been suggested that some students were driven away, perhaps because they weren't living up to the Urban Prep code. While there may be some genuine concern about the numbers, the fact still remains that Urban Prep is accomplishing something many high schools across the country are not: getting African-American males to graduate, period!
Even if Urban Prep's claim was to GRADUATE 80% of its African-American male students, that would beat out most, if not all, schools in America. To have these young men graduate with the intention of attending college is nothing short of AWESOME! Keep up the good work Urban Prep!
(Click here for the Tribune article ==> Urban Prep)
I wholeheartedly agree that Urban Prep is succeeding where others are failing! I just posted my fourth blog and it was about Urban Prep. Their model should be scaled up across the nation. But, of course that would never happen. This nation thrives off the misfortunes of others.
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