John Hope College Preparatory High School

John Hope College Preparatory High School was named after Dr. John Hope. In 1894 he graduated from Brown University. He taught at schools such as Roger Williams University and Atlanta Baptist College and later became the first black president of Morehouse College. Hope believed there was a need for social and political equality and argued that technical skill would prove worthless without it. Hope organized the Commission on Interracial Cooperation and later became its first president. Hope served as president of Atlanta University until 1936 when he died. John Hope Community Academy, at 5515 South Lowe Avenue, opened up in the fall of 1972 as a community middle school. The school has changed throughout the years and is currently John Hope College Preparatory High School with a single 8th grade class but will become solely a 4-year high school in the near future
As posted in our 2004 Illinois State report card there were 973 students enrolled at Hope. The attendance rate was 92%. 93.4% of the students came from low-income homes. 96% of the school is black and 4% are Hispanic. Our average class size is 21.5. The average composition score for the ACT is 16.7. The dropout rate has decreased over the years to a percent of 7.3%.

The school provides a variety of instructional models (inclusion, resource, continuum, and self-contained special classes with mainstreaming) to serve its special education (approximately 15%) population. The Intervention Team is used to provide support and assistance to students, parents, and faculty. Currently, 2% of our students receive English as Second Language (ESL) resource services.

Hope implements a very enriched curriculum to all of its students. The school incorporates a “House” concept. The school is composed of five houses made up of one or more teams. Each team works as a unit in identifying particular curricular, instructional, and other ancillary needs pertinent to a particular student. The school also tries to implement small student-to-teacher class ratios. The school staff is currently exploring modifications and reassessing its needs in order to integrate more reading, writing, and math instructional activities throughout the curriculum.

Our "excellence without excuses" motto comes from our recognition of socio-economic barriers faced by our students and our commitment to overcome them. The school demands dedication by our faculty, staff, administration, and most of all our parents and students enrolled in the school. We are a college preparatory high school with an eye on the future.