At Urban Prep, every senior in the school’s first graduating class has been accepted into a four-year college. Although the magnitude of the success can’t be judged absent a profile of the entering students, the article points to two striking facts: The school is only two years old and only four percent of the entering students read at grade level.
The most successful school I saw during my book research was Excellence Boys Charter School in New York. Those students are several years away from applying for college, but I predict similar outcomes there.
My question: Can elite charters in urban neighborhoods (and by elite I mean the quality of instruction, not the performance level of incoming students) achieve the same results with coed classes? KIPP seems to be doing that.