In a statement

As the Mississippi River mushrooms in Memphis, an team of students and teachers are diverted by some agreeable news.

Their school, Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis, has won the White House's Race to the Top Commencement Challenge, the White House announced Tuesday.

Vice President Joe Biden cried the school's principal Tuesday to declare their culling. The school hammer 5 other public lofty schools namely were finalists in the championship to showcase the best ways to arrange students for college and their future careers.

"This is one amazing moment for our students, staff, and the entire BTW community," Principal Alisha Kiner said. "Since this process began, we have been humbled by this experience and the overwhelming outpouring of love and advocate from the city of Memphis."

In a expression, President Barack Obama said, "Booker T. Washington High School proves what tin be accomplished while students, teachers, parents and administrators come together to support completion in the study-room. I'm looking amenable to conveying the commencement address at this amazing school soon."

The presidential lecture is the reward for conquering. According to the school's website, the graduation observance ambition be May 20.

The school has high teen pregnancy and HIV/AIDS rates and a history of violence. But the school's graduation rate has risen from 55% to almost 82% in the elapse four years.

"Even though they live in the poorest ZIP code in the city, the educational outcomes that they are producing are in the highest in the city," Memphis Schools Superintendent Kriner Cash said.

The inner-city school has a student body that is 100% African-American with 98% of students eligible for free alternatively reduced luncheon. They had a "civilization of failure," along to Cash.

Then, 3 annuals ago, the educate system accepted a list of reforms.

The headmaster at Booker T. Washington put in area numerous of the proposals, including gender-based classes as freshmen; assigning the best teachers in the essence subjects of English, mathematics and science; and increasing the number of Advanced Placement courses offered apt the students.

AP courses are considered a good way to prepare students for the rigor of college.

The school immediately has the lowest number of solemn violence incidents and the highest presence rate of always of the Memphis high schools.

This is the second year of the White House's Race to the Top Commencement Challenge. Last year, Kalamazoo Central High School in Michigan won the marathon. The initiative is chapter of the administration's dare for the United States to have the maximum academy graduates in the earth by 2020.