CHICAGO, May 29, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Arne Duncan,
U.S. Secretary of Education, joined North Lawndale College Prep
(NLCP) President John Horan today on
Chicago's west side to announce
The Phoenix Pact, a new scholarship program that makes it possible
for graduates of NLCP to attend top four-year colleges without
having to pay anything out-of-pocket for tuition, fees, room and
board. NLCP student recipients, families, and partnering college
representatives attended the private event.
More than $18M has been raised to
fund the program, which is designed to ensure that the school's
graduates can attend the colleges where they are most likely to be
successful, without cost standing in the way.
"To see the journey going from a class of kids to a system that
is not just one lucky family, one lucky child, but that children
from across the west side of Chicago can come here and not just graduate
and go to college -- I can't tell you how much it means to me
personally," said Duncan, who was a founding Board member of NLCP
when it opened in 1998.
Named after NLCP's mascot, the mythical Phoenix that is re-born from its own ashes,
the program is a three-way "pact": students commit to graduate with
a B average or better and attend a college with a track record of
successfully graduating minority students; colleges commit to
keeping total loan costs manageable and to ensuring that 50% or
more of their minority students earn a degree; and the Phoenix Pact
Fund commits to cover any financial gap remaining between the cost
of attendance and available financial aid.
"Too often our graduates settle for colleges that haven't had
much success with low-income and minority students because they
can't pay the two- to three-thousand extra that it costs to go to
the more successful colleges," said Horan. "The Phoenix Pact
changes that. It makes college choice cost-neutral."
To date, 15 colleges have signed on to be partners in the
program, including University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, University of
Illinois at Chicago, Michigan State
University, Lake Forest College,
and Carleton College among
others.
The Phoenix Pact Fund's goal is to provide scholarships to all
qualifying students for many years to come. More than 40 NLCP
2015 graduates will receive Phoenix Pact scholarships in its
inaugural year. It is expected that eventually, as many as 100
graduates of NLCP will receive scholarships annually – to the
benefit of hundreds of families on Chicago's West Side.
The larger vision for the program is rooted in the fact that the
U.S. spends $35 billion a year on
Pell grants to send low-income students to college, but less than
20% of these students ever earn a degree.
"Pell is broken," said Evan
Westerfield, Board Chair of the Phoenix Pact Fund, the
organization that is providing the scholarships. "The current
system will never change until a compelling alternative is put
forward and tested. The Phoenix Pact will be that alternative."
Since its founding 17 years ago, NLCP's mission has been to
prepare young people from under-resourced communities so that they
have the academic skills and personal resilience necessary for
successful completion of college. To date, NLCP's graduates
have earned degrees at four-to-five times the national average for
low-income students. The Phoenix Pact will help NLCP push
that number even higher.
For more information about The Phoenix Pact, visit
www.phoenixpact.org or call Evan
Westerfield (847) 868-4324.
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SOURCE North Lawndale College Prep