Chicago Tribune
Each year, the nonprofit Urban Students Empowered finds diamonds in the rough at Chicago Public Schools and gives them the hope of a college education.
But the real gems may be the teachers who lead the program, which since its 2007 founding has had 98 percent of participants accepted to four-year colleges, program officials said. That is dramatically higher than the average 18 percent of incoming public high school students who eventually enroll in four-year colleges, said US Empowered's executive director, Jeff Nelson, citing figures from the Consortium on Chicago School Research...