Black High School Graduates in Chicago Making Major Strides in College Enrollments

The city of Chicago is making substantial progress in increasing the college enrollment rate of students who graduate from its public high schools. For the fourth year in a row, the college enrollment rate of graduates at the city’s 116 public high schools has increased. Now 52.5 percent of all black students who earn a high school diploma in Chicago go on to college. This is only slightly less than the college enrollment rate for black students nationwide. Just five years ago, the college enrollment rate for black students in Chicago trailed the national rate by 18 percentage points.

School officials say that several scholarship programs offering financial aid to black graduates of the city’s high schools have been the major factor in the improvement in the college enrollment rate.

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