POLICY AND PROGRAM STUDIES SERVICE

**REPORT HIGHLIGHTS**

**Early Outcomes of the GEAR UP Program: Final Report**

In 1998, Congress authorized the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness
for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) program. The purpose of the program
is to foster increased knowledge, expectations, and preparation for
postsecondary education among low-income students and their families.
GEAR UP projects may provide services to students, parents and teachers
at high-poverty schools with at least 50 percent of students eligible
for free or reduced-price lunches. Services may include: tutoring,
mentoring, college field trips, career awareness, college-readiness
counseling, classes, meetings, parent education about access to higher
education, curriculum reform, and teacher training. GEAR UP is based on
a model of providing services to an entire grade cohort, and grantees
are required to offer services to all students in the target grade or
grades according to their needs, but individual participation is
voluntary. GEAR UP services must begin no later than the seventh grade.
The GEAR UP model also stresses partnerships of schools, districts,
community organizations and postsecondary institutions. The first grants
were awarded in August of 1999. Most of the first GEAR UP grantees began
by serving sixth- or seventh-graders in fall of 1999, with the intention
of providing continuing services to this cohort of students as they
progressed through high school.

**Evaluation Design**

There were two major goals of the evaluation. The first was to provide
descriptive information on the early implementation of the program and
the second was to observe the association between GEAR UP participation,
and student and parent outcomes. To provide the descriptive information
the study conducted site visits to a sample of 20 of the initial
partnership projects. From these partnerships, a sample of 18 middle
schools and 18 matched comparisons schools was selected and up to 140
seventh-grade students were randomly selected from each school. Student
and parent surveys were administered about midway through the seventh
grade and near the end of the eighth grade. Student school records and
GEAR UP participation records were also obtained.

This report focuses on middle school outcomes. The outcomes associated
with high school achievement and preparation for and enrollment in
college will be examined in subsequent data collections and reports.[^1]

**Data Limitations**

A number of factors limited the strength of conclusions: First of all
the study was not a randomized experiment and the school matching was
limited. The set of cooperating grantees and schools is a small
purposive sample, leading both to concerns about generalizability and
power to detect small effects---particularly schoolwide effects such as
curriculum changes and the resulting shift in course-taking patterns.
The comparison schools could not be matched on historical college
attendance rates, as would have ideally been desired. It should also be
noted that because service provision started prior to baseline data
collection, it was not possible to remove all seventh-grade differences
between the two sets of students without simultaneously removing some of
the effects of early information services. As a result of these caveats,
the findings in this report are more suggestive than definitive.

**Key Findings**

-   Attending a GEAR UP school as measured near the end of eighth grade
    was positively associated[^2] with parents' knowledge of
    opportunities and benefits of postsecondary education for their
    children.

-   Attending a GEAR UP school as measured near the end of eighth grade
    was positively associated with students' knowledge concerning
    postsecondary education opportunities available to them.

-   Attending a GEAR UP school as measured near the end of eighth grade
    was positively associated with parents' involvement in the school
    and their children's education.

-   Attending a GEAR UP school as measured near the end of eighth grade
    was positively associated with parents' having higher academic
    expectations for their children. However, there was no evidence of
    an association between attending a GEAR UP school and the strength
    of student intentions to attend college, expectations for
    postsecondary education or overall orientation toward college.

-   There was no evidence of an association between attending a GEAR UP
    school and grades or school behavior, such as attendance or
    disciplinary problems.

-   Attending a GEAR UP school as measured near the end of eighth grade
    was a positively associated with taking above-grade-level science
    courses in middle school.

-   For African-American students attendance at a GEAR UP school as
    measured near the end of eighth grade was positively associated with
    the number of rigorous (or above grade level)[^3] courses taken
    during middle school. African-American students from GEAR UP schools
    averaged 1.0 rigorous course as compared 0.5 of a course among
    African-American students from non-GEAR UP schools.

    The site visits to the sampled GEAR UP middle schools revealed the
    following:

-   GEAR UP middle school staff, participating in the study focus
    groups, reported that GEAR UP middle schools were more likely than
    non-GEAR UP middle schools to offer honors and above-grade-level
    classes. They perceived that some of these changes took place with
    the implementation of the GEAR UP projects in 1999.

-   Most of the teachers who participated in focus groups expressed
    positive opinions about GEAR UP-sponsored professional development,
    although there was some variation in how useful or relevant teachers
    felt individual sessions were for them or to GEAR UP's purpose.

Finally, the study examined GEAR UP on two important issues:
transitioning the program to high school and sustainability beyond the
federal grant.

-   Projects reported some difficulty transitioning into high schools;
    such as inadequate staffing and administrative barriers, which were
    similar to those, reported two years earlier when the grants were
    just starting out in middle schools. Projects reporting the
    smoothest transitions tended to provide services to high school
    students that were similar to those provided to middle school
    students.

-   Early evidence suggests that some aspects of GEAR UP will be
    sustained in middle schools beyond the period of federal funding.
    About half of the projects studied were optimistic about continuing,
    and one-third had made specific plans to do so as they neared the
    third year of their grants.

[^1]: In September 2004, the U.S. Department of Education issued a
    contract to determine high school outcomes such as academic
    preparation for postsecondary education and postsecondary
    enrollment.

[^2]: Throughout the report, an \"association\" is discussed only if the
    supporting hypothesis test was significant at the 5 percent level,
    meaning there would have been only a 5 percent chance of finding the
    difference by chance. There are some associations discussed in the
    body of the report when the significance level of the test was at
    the 10 percent level. These are qualified by the phrase \"modest
    evidence.\" If no evidence was found even at the 10 percent level,
    the phrase \"no evidence\" is used.

[^3]: Academic rigor is determined by the number of core academic
    courses taken that are considered to be above grade level for an
    average eighth-grade student.