Urban Boys' Academy: Every Grad Got Into College, Third Year in a Row

Urban Prep Academies, a Chicago–based, nonprofit organization that operates a network of public college-preparatory high schools for boys, recently announced that for the third-consecutive year, its entire senior class is college bound.

Urban Prep Academies, which operates schools in three city neighborhoods, reported the 2012 senior class members have been accepted to 128 different four-year colleges and universities, including Alcorn State University, the American University of Paris, Fisk University, Howard University, Morehouse College, Northwestern University  and Xavier University of Louisiana.

School officials announced in 2010 and in 2011 that both graduating classes had been accepted to four-year colleges, although some students decided not to enroll for various reasons. 

The class of 2010 was the Urban Prep Academies' first graduating class. According to data provided by the network, 94 percent of the 2010, senior class enrolled in four-year colleges, and 80 percent of those graduates completed their freshman year.  

The network is helping black male students academically and financially. Urban Prep Academies recently formed a partnership with the United Negro College Fund, the Fairfax, Va.-based philanthropic organization that raises college tuition for black students and general scholarship funds for 38 private historically black colleges and universities. Many of the seniors have been accepted to Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

In 2002, Tim King, former principal of Hales Franciscan High School, an all-male, Catholic high school in Chicago, and other civic and business leaders began planning for an all-male, public high school.

The Chicago Public Schools approved a charter in 2005, and the organization opened its first school, Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood in September 2006. Urban Prep Charter Academy was the nation's first charter, public high school for boys. Although the school is open to boys of different races and ethnic groups, the majority, if not all of the students enrolled are African American.

Urban Prep’s second school opened in the East Garfield Park community in 2009, and moved it to Chicago's near West Side in 2011.

Urban Prep’s third campus, located in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood, opened in 2010. Approximately 85 percent of Urban Prep students are low-income with low grade-point averages upon entering.
 
“While the vast majority of students come to us below grade level, we are able to accelerate them because we have an extended school day, extended school year, double periods of English and math, Saturday school and mentoring and a positive school culture,” say school officials.

They also note that Urban Prep Academies' students outperform African-American male students in non-selective Chicago public schools on standardized tests.

Some 30 percent of students leave Urban Prep Academies between their freshman and senior years, but school officials say that some students transfer to other school districts or to another state.

“They don't just drop out of school entirely,” said school officials, adding that their retention rate of black boys is much higher than that of the Chicago Public Schools, which experiences a dropout rate ranging from 56 percent to 61 percent.

The University of Chicago reported in 2006 that only one in 40 black boys would graduate from the city's high schools after four years.