Gerald Herbert, The Associated Press Former President Bill Clinton greets graduates as he poses for a group photo at a graduation ceremony for Urban League College Track in New Orleans on Thursday.

 Camera crews lined up for interviews an hour ahead of time, guests chatted in the lobby waiting for a glimpse of the country's 42nd commander-in-chief, and men in dark suits with earpieces stood ready outside. Appropriately, it all took place in the historic Joy Theater on Canal Street.

At the center of all this was a group of New Orleans seniors who have spent the past few years preparing assiduously for what's next. They come from different high schools in the city, but all have participated in College Track, a program run by a national nonprofit of the same name in cooperation with the Urban League of Greater New Orleans.

Organizers, who put the number of guests for the evening at about 450, said everyone in the first graduating class has been accepted to a four-year university.

It's still a relatively small program, up and running in five locations around the country. In New Orleans it has enrolled about 152 high school students who commit to spending three days a week after school getting academic support, researching colleges and learning how to be active citizens in their communities.

Chris Granger, The Times-Picayune

Urban League College Track students Irene Beauvais, A'jai Braxton, Troy Simon, Darrielle Trotter and Tina Webster perform for their classmates Thursday. May 10 2012

But College Track also happens to have been co-founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of the late personal computer visionary Steve Jobs. Hence the high-wattage guests.

Clinton called on his personal history, telling the assembled graduates, "I'm the first person in my family ever to go to college. I was raised in a family where my stepfather didn't finish high school and my life was changed because I got the chance to go."

He also singled them out as the potential savior not just of New Orleans but of the U.S. economy as a whole. "You represent the future of this country," he said, "a future which is up for grabs in part because in the last 12 years we have allowed ourselves for the first time since the end of World War II to fall from 1st to 15th in the world in the percentage of our young people getting degrees from a four-year universities. And it is killing us economically."

Clinton recalled a dinner party he had attended the week before, hosted by Powell Jobs in Silicon Valley: "There were all these billionaires there who had made all this money in high-tech stuff and they said, 'We could hire 3 million young people tomorrow and turn this country around if we were educating enough people in the areas where the 21st century needs more jobs."

Alluding to the city's continuing recovery from Hurricane Katrina and the school reform efforts that have followed, he said, "New Orleans is coming back in no small part because of education improvements, and you are Exhibit A."

Andrew Vanacore can be reached at avanacore@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3304.
Orginally Published: Thursday, May 10, 2012, 11:15 PM
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2012/05/former_president_bill_clinton.html

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Former President Bill Clinton addresses high school graduates in New Orleans
The graduation ceremony Thursday evening for 37 New Orleans youngsters wrapping up a college prep program called Urban League College Track
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2012/05/former_president_bill_clinton.html