Charter school in Chicago sending all its graduates on to college

All 107 seniors in Chicago’s all-male The Urban Prep Charter School are heading to college - four-year colleges.

One hundred percent!

Even the prestigious Louisville Male High School only graduated 98.7 percent according to its 2008-2009 School Report Card (Available from pull-down menus here). And, only 92.6 percent are going on to either two- or four-year colleges combined.

By the way, Male is a magnet school that accepts academically strong students through a competition.

Urban Prep uses a straight lottery to admit students. Any applicant has an equal chance of admittance.

Only four percent of Urban Prep’s seniors could read at grade level when they entered the school as freshmen. So much for claims that this school skims the cream.

There are more interesting comparisons. Urban Prep’s students are 82 percent low income. Based on data in Louisville Male’s School Report Card for 2009 reading, Male’s low-income rate is only 24.8 percent.

Certainly, Urban Prep’s ACT score average is much lower than Male’s, but this charter school still has something great going on if every one of its seniors got into a four-year college.

Don’t we need that sort of educational excitement in Kentucky?

(To learn more about Urban Prep, click here)