Answered prayer

PUT in a call to Hales Franciscan school in Chicago, and the answerphone message tells you that “100% of our 1996 students were admitted to college.” Arrive at the school at 8.45 in the morning, and 300 black teenagers in crisp white shirts and ties are getting down, in total quiet, to a school day heavy with English and mathematics. Hales Franciscan is a sterling success story—all the more so because it sits in a part of the city where most of the children are on financial assistance and where, as one local man puts it, “You would not want your car to break down.”