Good News From The Big City

It probably doesn't matter much which big city you live near.  The bulk of the news coming from "the city" sometimes seems to be mostly some sort of body count.   At the beginning of each week, the newspapers often (usually) have articles counting how many gunshot incidents occurred over the week-end, how many people were injured, and how many were killed.   In Chicago, all too often, the victims of all this violence are young people.  It gets very depressing, and I don't even actually live in the city.   I can hardly imagine how this kind of carnage affects residents of the areas with all the violence.

That said, sometimes there is a glimmer of hope, a spot of sunshine in an otherwise dismal day of news.   There was such a glimmer in the news here the other day about a graduating class at Urban Prep High School (a link to the article is below.)  This school was created as a charter school in Chicago with lofty goals:

Urban Prep would be a charter high school. It would bring together some 150 boys from some of the poorest, gang-ravaged neighborhoods and try to set them on a new track.   They'd have strict rules: A longer school day -- by two hours. Two classes of English daily.  A uniform with jackets and ties.  And Urban Prep had a goal -- one that seemed audacious, given that just 4 percent of the Class of 2010 was reading at or above grade level when they arrived at the school in 2006.

In four years, they were told, they'd be heading to college.

So, here we are four years later.   Of the 150 teens who started at Urban Prep in 2006, 95 completed the entire four years and another 12 students transferred in to graduate with the class of 2010.   All 107 students have received at least one, and generally several, acceptance letters from colleges across the country.   I was struck by the fact that the article doesn't paint a "Pollyanna" picture, it discusses the trials and difficulties that these students encountered over the four years, including actually quitting, returning to a "public" high school, and discovering that they wanted, indeed needed, to return to Urban Prep.  The dedication and support provided by the staff at the high school is nothing short of amazing (60% of the faculty are black men).  The mentoring and modeling by the adults was clearly critical to the success of these students.   Both the students and faculty at Urban Prep deserve a long, hearty round of applause.

You should read the AP article in the Daily Herald.   The story is amazing and uplifting.  It's very good news from the city.