(chicagotribune.com) D’Angelo Gardner didn’t like it when staff members at Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men started telling him to tuck in his shirt, pull up his pants, straighten his tie.

He didn’t like the unfamiliar feeling of having a black man telling him what to do at all. His father had died of a heroin overdose when he was 9. His mother, raising three children on her own, hoped that the new charter school in West Englewood could teach her son how to be a man.

“Please pick my son. We need you,” Angela Russell scribbled several times in the margins of his school application.

Urban Prep, Chicago’s only public all-boys high school, opened last fall against the backdrop of nationwide concern over the widening achievement gap between African-American boys and other students. On the first day of school, the average freshman at Urban Prep was reading at a 6th-grade level.

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Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men

* Founded by Tim King, former head of Hales Franciscan High School, a South Side Catholic school for black boys

* Opened Sept. 5, 2006, with 160 freshmen selected by lottery

* Mission: To provide a college-preparatory education

* By 2010 the school will house freshmen through seniors

* The school is moving from its current location, Lindblom Math and Science Academy, to 6201 S. Stewart Ave.

* 22 employees, most of whom are African-American men: 10 full-time teachers, 12 full-time administrators and staff members

* $2.25 million annual budget; nearly $1 million from fundraising

Student demographics

* 60 percent of students live in the Englewood or West Englewood neighborhoods.

* 90 percent come from single-parent households.

* 92 percent daily attendance rate.

* 95 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch.

Additional information: www.urbanprep.org (source)

Do your own research!

Name the one entity that has consistently fought against charter schools? (hint: I talk about them on this site many times)