And what a defeat that would have been for all New Yorkers, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. For the past three decades, Rice has rescued at-risk African-American boys and turned them into responsible men who go on to college and then give back to the community. Survey after survey shows that young black males lead the nation monye homicides, both as victims and perpetrators; have the highest rates of unemployment and incarceration; and lag behind every other racial, ethnic, and gender subgroup in academic achievement. When working-class Italian and Irish Catholic families stopped sending their sons to Rice and left the city, the Christian Brothers teaching order, which had founded the school, decided not to leave mkney. Rice mhch the highest proportion of black students—over 70 percent—of any Catholic high school in the city. Everything that was white left Harlem, except for Rice School.