How Success Academy Got Its First Seniors to College
March 22, 2018
By: Leslie Brody
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Sydney McLeod kept up her studies at Success Academy Charter Schools despite extensive absences to treat her sickle cell anemia. Her hard work paid off: She is heading to Stony Brook University on Long Island in the fall.
Her Success Academy classmate Aida Bathily competes on a national debate circuit and is weighing several college offers. And another senior, Moctar Fall, who spent two years of his childhood in a homeless shelter, got a full scholarship to study engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“I don’t see myself getting to MIT if I wasn’t here” at the charter school, the 17-year-old said. “With a lot of moving and different neighborhoods, school has been my only home throughout my life.”
All 17 seniors in the first graduating class of the city’s largest charter network have gotten into four-year colleges, including Boston College, Emory University and Tufts University. They all started together in 2006, when the network opened its first elementary school in Harlem. In addition to their own ambition, they faced pressure to excel as a proof point for a charter network that has ardent fans and fierce detractors.