Good News Tuesday: The Providence Effect

The Providence Effect is a documentary about the Providence St. Mel school located on Chicago's South Side.

Director-producer Rollin Binzer plainly and understandably admires St. Mel's, an institution that for the past 30 years has sent each one of its graduating seniors off to a four-year college. Well do we know that many American schools are doing a rather dreadful job, so it's inspiring to see that, at St. Mel's at least, our children is learning.

Through interviews with administrator Paul Adams III, "The Providence Effect" focuses partly on St. Mel's decades-long struggle toward stability. After Adams's civil rights involvement led to his being blacklisted from teaching in Alabama, he moved to Chicago and set about turning St. Mel's from a foundering parochial school in a gang-ridden community into a competitive K-12 institution.

Under Adams, the school has amassed donors and a sharp faculty, making private education accessible to African American students who might not otherwise have found themselves prepping for college. It's obviously a success story, writ large and public; Ronald Reagan paid two glowing visits to St. Mel's in the 1980s, and Barack Obama once addressed the students during his community organizing days, a tidbit that the documentary (shot in 2007) omits. (Washington Post)

Check out the Web site for information about the school and theater listings around the country. Then make sure to check out the Good News Tuesday posts at The Happy Go Lucky Bachelor, Monie on the Outside, and Electronic Village. And as always check out Tradition of Excellence for good news every day of the week.