 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Schools
(page 1 of 5)
ALAIN LOCKE CHARTER ACADEMY
3141 West Jackson Boulevard
773-265-7230; alainlocke.org
In case you’re wondering, the squirming, giggling youngsters in the prekindergarten classrooms at Alain Locke Charter Academy in East Garfield Park will start college in the year 2023.
Outside the door of every classroom at this highly regarded ten-year-old charter school, a sign announces the year the students in that grade will start (or in later grades, complete) college. And if that doesn’t make the point that Locke and its teachers are grooming all its students—whose parents are largely low-income folks who did not attend college—for academic success, each classroom is named for an upper-tier college or university and a historically black school. For instance, the sixth-grade classroom is known as Harvard/Howard.
Is there an element of overkill here? Not according to Locke’s principal, Lennie Jones. “You have to kind of turbocharge it when you’re trying to counteract something that you know is really harming children,” she says. “We have to counterbalance the general lack of exposure in the family to the idea that there is a greater world out there and that these children can reach it if they work toward the goal.”
Locke, named for a pioneering African American scholar who died in 1954, has the hallmarks of a good charter school—high expectations, a rigorous academic program, and an extended school day and school year—and the high test scores that go with them. But the school also makes sure the kids receive a good look at the city and the world outside Garfield Park. “Experience-based learning” excursions have taken students to Ghana and England, and later this year students will visit Greece and Italy. (The trips are funded by philanthropic donations and fundraisers.) These are children, explains Gloria Woodson, Locke’s assistant principal, whose parents may venture no farther from their struggling neighborhood than when they travel to jobs in the Loop—and their circumstances have inscribed a small circle around their own aspirations. “Their children are getting a view of the larger world and they want a place in it,” Woodson says.
Locke’s founder, Pat Ryan Jr.—the son of the former Aon chief, who is now spearheading the city’s 2016 Olympics bid—grew up with all kinds of privileges, but he went on to become an inner-city teacher. “The people in this neighborhood want the same things for their kids that people of means want for ourselves,” he says, “but we’ve been given all the opportunities.”
FOUNDED: 1999
GRADES: Pre-K-8
ENROLLMENT: 510
STUDENTS PER TEACHER: 8 (Pre-K); 13 (K-4); 21 (5-8)
PERCENTAGE WHO MEET OR EXCEED STATE STANDARDS ON THE ILLINOIS STATE ACHIEVEMENT TEST (2007-08): 81.0
SNAPSHOT: Locke prepares low-income, inner-city kids for college by combining rigorous academics with a global outlook.
E-Mail
PrintAdvertisement
Copyright 2012 Chicago Magazine - A Chicago Tribune website
Comments are moderated. We review them in an effort to remove offensive language, commercial messages, and irrelevancies.
Reader Comments:
Close to half of the students attending PCCS live in the Prairie Crossing housing development. The farm the kids work on - owned by the homeowners. Prospective students must apply to a lottery - but none of us know about it until the deadline is past. Guess the homeowners have their own priority application process. The school is constantly in financial trouble, teacher salaries have been frozen again. Weren't charter schools designed to pull up those students who needed a new approach to learning? Not this charter school, with it's $9.4 million campus, needing more and more of our tax dollars each year.
I live in district 50 and all my children attend Prairie Crossing Charter School. I found out about the lottery by reading about it in the newspaper. The school adverstises the lottery every year in a variety of different newspapers, including local Hispanic ones. They also place flyers at many different day care centers. In addition, the lottery information can also be found on the school website. Please try to research a topic before you criticize. Yes, the school has been struggling financially but most schools are struggling during these difficult economic times. Woodland District 50's top administrators' salaries are frozen too (which I read about in the newspaper). Also, PCCS does not receive ANY portion of the local property taxes collected. PCCS is by no means perfect but my children thrive in the small school environment.