POLICY AND PROGRAM STUDIES SERVICE

National Evaluation of GEAR UP

A Summary of the First Two Years

2003

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

DOC # 2003-13

OFFICE OF THE UNDER SECRETARY
National Evaluation of GEAR UP

A Summary of the First Two Years

U.S. Department of Education

Office of the Under Secretary

Policy and Program Studies Service

Westat

Rockville, Md.

2003
This report was prepared for the U.S. Department of Education under Contract No. ED-99-CO-1039 by

Westat. Dan Goldenberg served as the contracting officer’s representative. The views expressed herein do

not necessarily represent the positions or policies of the Department of Education. No official

endorsement by the Department of Education of any product, commodity, service or enterprise mentioned

in this publication is intended or should be inferred.

U.S. Department of Education

Rod Paige

Secretary

Office of the Under Secretary

Eugene W. Hickok

Under Secretary

Policy and Program Studies Service

Alan L. Ginsburg

Director

April 2003

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Education, Office of the Under Secretary, Policy and Program Studies Service, National Evaluation of

GEAR UP A Summary of the First Two Years, Washington, D.C., 2002.

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iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank the many individuals whose efforts contributed to the preparation of this report.

First, we would like to thank our consultant, Lana Muraskin, who summarized and synthesized two years

of site visit reports and wrote the preliminary draft of this report.

We also would like to express our gratitude to members of the Technical Working Group for valuable

reviews of drafts of this report. They provided insightful comments and constructive recommendations for

improvements. The members of the Technical Working Group include: Ann Coles, the Education

Resources Institute; David Cordray, Institute for Public Policy Studies, Vanderbilt University; Mary Beth

Curtis, Center for Special Education, Lesley College; John Gargani, I Have a Dream Foundation; Hector

Garza, National Council for Community and Education Partnerships; Tom Kane, University of

California-Los Angeles; Hayes Mizell, Program for Student Achievement, Edna McConnell Clark

Foundation; Amaury Nora, University of Houston; Tracy Proctor, I Have a Dream, Southeast D.C.; Linda

Shiller, Vermont Student Assistance Corporation.

Similarly, we are appreciative of the staffs of our subcontractors, Branch Associates and Decision

Information Resources, and the staff of Westat who conducted the site visits. They prepared the site visit

reports and encouraged the schools and GEAR UP projects to provide the study data.

Special thanks go to the GEAR UP projects, their staffs and the schools participating in the national

evaluation. By helping with our many requests for data and hosting the site visit teams they have made

this project and report possible.

Finally, we would like to thank Kevin Cramer and Dan Goldenberg, project officers at the U.S.

Department of Education, for their interest and guidance in this study and their comments on early drafts

of this report.

Linda A. LeBlanc

Project Director

Kim Standing

Deputy Project Director

Alexander Ratnofsky

Vice President
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v

Contents

Executive Summary.............................................................................................................. 1

The Federal Grants........................................................................................... 1

This Report ...................................................................................................... 2

What We Have Learned................................................................................... 3

Part One: Partnership Grants ................................................................................................ 5

The Students in GEAR UP and Their Parents ................................................. 5

Services Students Receive ............................................................................... 7

Supplemental Academic Support..................................................................... 7

Guiding Students to College ............................................................................ 9

Intensity of Supplemental Services.................................................................. 11

Services Parents Receive ................................................................................. 13

Support Schools Receive ................................................................................. 14

Administering GEAR UP Partnerships............................................................ 16

GEAR UP and the School Environment.......................................................... 18

Part Two: State GEAR UP Projects...................................................................................... 19

Grants Where All or Most Services Are Administered by State Agencies...... 19

Grants Where All or Most Services Are Conducted through Subgrants

to Schools or Districts...................................................................................... 19

Endnotes ......................................................................................................................... 21

List of Figures

Figure 1. Racial and ethnic composition of GEAR UP students .................... 5

Figure 2. Comparison of GEAR UP and national participation rates

in special programs.......................................................................... 6
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1

Executive Summary

Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) is a federal program

aimed at equalizing access to higher education for low-income students. GEAR UP was created in 1998

as part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965. As mandated by the legislation, GEAR

UP grantees seek to increase postsecondary access and completion by promoting the following:

 Information to students and parents (e.g., appropriate information on college preparatory

courses, cost of college attendance, financial assistance and different programs of study).

 Individualized academic and social support to students.

 Parent involvement in education.

 Educational excellence.

 School reform.

 Student participation in rigorous courses.

To further these objectives, GEAR UP grantees are charged with establishing strong and lasting

partnerships among school districts, colleges and other entities to operate the projects.

In this report we look at the students being served by GEAR UP, the activities and services provided to

these students and their parents, additional professional development opportunities for teachers and

curriculum development efforts taking place in these schools. We summarize the growth and changes that

occurred at the study sites during the first two years of their grants.

The Federal Grants

GEAR UP entered its third year of operation in fall 2001. The first grants were awarded in August 1999

to two types of recipients: (1) partnerships of school districts, colleges and other organizations (164

awards) and (2) state agencies (21 awards). In its first year, the program awarded $75 million in federal

resources to partnership grantees and $42 million to state grantees. Additional grantees were added in

2000 and 2001. There are now 243 partnership grantees and 30 state grantees. A total of about $295

million was awarded in fiscal year (FY) 2001 to all GEAR UP grantees. Two-thirds of the federal funds

were awarded to partnership grantees and the remaining one-third to state grantees.

Partnership grants require recipients to begin providing services to students no later than seventh grade

and to continue services to these students in participating high schools until graduation. This requirement

means that, in most school districts in the program, middle schools have been the first schools to

participate in GEAR UP. In all participating schools, at least 50 percent of the students must be lowincome (i.e., eligible for free or reduced-price lunches). Unlike other federal programs designed to

increase college access that enroll students who meet specified criteria, GEAR UP partnership grantees

must provide assistance to all students in designated grade levels in participating schools (called cohorts).

The whole grade (or grade cohort) approach recognizes that in schools with high rates of family poverty,

all students are at greater risk of poor academic performance and low rates of college attendance. 1 The

GEAR UP approach of serving all students also allows services to be integrated into the school day and

regular educational offerings, providing greater opportunities for academic assistance and education

reform.
2

The federal resources provided through GEAR UP are relatively modest given the program’s ambitious

goals. In the first year of the program, the 164 partnerships served more than 100,000 students with an

average per student expenditure of about $650 from federal resources. The maximum allowable federal

allocation per student is $800. To extend the available resources, grantees are required to support at least

50 percent of the cost of operating their projects through cash and in-kind contributions. The remainder of

this report will report on the federal share. In their second year, the same 164 grantees served just over

150,000 students, with an average per student expenditure of about $630. The 73 new partnership

grantees added in 2000 served about 45,000 students at an average of approximately $760 per student. 2

These resources were used not only to provide student services but also to provide information and

services to parents and to implement reforms (such as curriculum development, teacher professional

development and other school reform efforts).

State grantees operate under somewhat different rules from partnerships. A wide range of state agencies

may administer state grants alone or in conjunction with other entities. State GEAR UP grants must offer

both a college awareness and preparation component as well as college scholarships; at least 50 percent of

the grant must be used for scholarships. Projects may provide services to cohorts of students (like

partnerships), or they may focus on disadvantaged “priority students” in any grade.3

 They may also obtain

waivers on the use of funds for scholarships until current GEAR UP participants reach college age.

The average per student funding amount for state grants is lower than that reported by partnerships. In the

second year of their grants, 21 1999-funded state grantees served more than 135,000 students at an

average cost of about $370 in federal funds per student. State grantees receiving their first-year award in

2000 served about 29,000 students for less than $400 per student.

This Report

The legislation establishing GEAR UP mandated an evaluation of the program. This report is an early

product of that evaluation. The report describes the program, as implemented, and sets the stage for later

examination of GEAR UP’s impact on high school performance and college participation. The report

suggests hypotheses and issues about GEAR UP practices and student outcomes that can be pursued in

the longitudinal study described below. We also identify implementation issues that have arisen as the

program has developed that may warrant attention from program officials. Information on partnership and

state grantees is reported separately.

The study design. The evaluation is following a group of GEAR UP participants who entered the

program in seventh grade during the 2000-01 school year. (We refer to this component of the evaluation

as the “longitudinal study.”) The students were selected from partnership projects that began operation in

the first year of GEAR UP (1999-2000) and indicated in late 1999 that they were “fairly well along” in

implementation and that they planned to serve a new cohort of seventh-graders the following year.

Approximately one-third of the first year partnership grantees were excluded because they planned to

serve only one cohort over the life of their grants. From among the two-thirds planning to pickup a new

cohort of seventh-graders in fall 2000, Westat selected 20 partnership grantees for the evaluation. Because

the focus of this evaluation is on the effect of various approaches on student outcomes, Westat made

every effort to include projects with applications that reflected different programmatic approaches and a

mix of fiscal agents (i.e., school districts, colleges and universities).4

 We then simultaneously matched

one middle school participating in each GEAR UP project with a middle school in the same or nearby

school district with similar students but without GEAR UP for comparison purposes.
3

Because the students who are being followed in the national evaluation are still enrolled in middle school,

student outcomes such as enrollment in college preparatory courses, high school completion and college

attendance will not be known for several more years. Nonetheless, some information is available now

about the first two years of GEAR UP from all GEAR UP projects and from the projects and schools

participating in the evaluation. This information forms the basis for the current report and includes the

following:

 Background information on participating students and their parents. Westat collected data

from 18 schools through student and parent surveys as well as records of students’ and parents’

GEAR UP participation.

 Descriptive information from site visits to the 20 partnerships conducted during each of the

first two years of GEAR UP that explored the nature and status of GEAR UP.5

 During those

visits, Westat asked project, district, and school personnel about the design and approach of the

GEAR UP project, the partnerships, program administration, the activities that had been

undertaken or were planned, the project staffing, and role of the project in reform at the school.

Site visitors asked project directors what activities were underway to enable comparable efforts

to continue after the end of the grant. Site visitors also conducted group interviews with

students, parents, and teachers. Staff made similar visits to seven state grantees as well.

 Information from the 2001 GEAR UP Annual Performance Reports (APRs). The APR

provides aggregate data on all GEAR UP projects. All GEAR UP grantees submitted their first

APR designed specifically for the program in May 2001.6

What We Have Learned

Student Characteristics: In the second year of operation (2000-01), there were 237 GEAR UP

partnerships serving nearly 200,000 students, 90 percent of whom were in the seventh or eighth grade.

GEAR UP students were predominately minority—36 percent were Hispanic, 30 percent African

American, 26 percent were white, 5 percent Native American and Hawaiian and 3 percent Asian.

School Characteristics and Climate: As required by law, all schools participating in GEAR UP had free

or reduced-price lunch eligibility rates of 50 percent or higher, with a median rate of 67 percent. Several

of the 20 middle schools visited as part of the study were facing serious education problems—poor

academic performance, high staff turnover and low morale. Initially, this led to resistance to GEAR UP in

those schools because it was thought by some that the program might dilute their school’s focus on

improving academics and test scores. However, by the second site visit in spring 2001, school staff

perceptions of GEAR UP had improved markedly, with GEAR UP being seen as a positive force for

academic improvement.

Administering GEAR UP Partnerships: On average between 1999-2000 and 2000-01, GEAR UP

partnerships received federal grants of $713,000 or about $660 per student. Most of the federal funds are

used for staffing. A typical project has a full-time director and possibly one other full-time staff member

who are centrally located. In addition, these projects generally have full-time site coordinators and some

part-time assistants at each participating middle school. Many projects had planned on having fairly

elaborate decision-making processes and involving numerous community partners. In reality, GEAR UP

partners rely heavily on project staff (e.g., project directors and coordinators) to plan and carry out project
4

operations. Most of the partners have been education providers. Two other areas where grantees’ original

designs have been difficult to implement are involvement of parents and volunteers. The sites visited as

part of the evaluation study indicated they had a great deal of difficulty in getting parents involved in

GEAR UP activities. A few sites reported success with institutes that enrolled parents in 9- to 10-week

workshops or with extensive outreach efforts, individual meetings and home visits. Sites also had trouble

recruiting volunteers in the numbers they originally intended and ended up making more use of paid

professional staff to provide services.

GEAR UP Services: Projects can be grouped in two major categories based on the services they provide.

Some projects focus on instructional or other efforts that affect the regular operation of the school; others

focus on the provision of supplemental services to students. One of the sites visited is engaged in a major

curriculum reform effort with a few others having components that augment regular instruction. Most of

the other projects focused on providing a variety of supplemental services to students:

 Tutoring was the most common service offered across sites during years one and two. For

budgetary reasons, many projects planned on using volunteers to provide much of the tutoring

but, as discussed above, ended up relying much more heavily on paid professional staff, often

teachers at the school, to provide tutoring services. It could be argued that this was actually a

fortunate occurrence because studies have indicated that effective tutoring requires high dosages,

experienced tutors and curriculum alignment all of which are more likely to occur with paid staff

as opposed to volunteers working sporadically. Projects significantly reduced planned mentoring

activities, on the other hand, due to the lack of volunteers. Projects also had difficulty attracting

students to tutoring during out-of-school hours due to transportation difficulties and competing

interests.

 College-planning activities—college fairs, visits to colleges, etc.—occurred at almost all

projects and tended to be well-received by students. Projects also held a number of voluntary

special events to help broaden the horizons of students. Besides providing general college and

career information to students, one-third of the sites visited also provided individual guidance to

all students or all students having academic or behavioral difficulties.

 Ambitious summer programs were offered by many projects at the end of their first year but it

proved difficult to attract students in the expected numbers. Some projects scaled back their

summer plans in the second year (summer 2001) in terms of length and expected number of

participants.

 Professional development activities increased significantly between years one and two as

teachers became more accepting of GEAR UP. Focus groups indicated that teachers were

generally satisfied with the professional development opportunities that GEAR UP provided.

State Projects: Four of the seven states visited as part of the study administered GEAR UP services

directly from the state agency where the grant was housed. The remaining three states awarded subgrants

to schools or districts in the states to operate GEAR UP projects.
5

Part One: Partnership Grants

The Students in GEAR UP and Their Parents

A profile of participants. Each GEAR UP partnership is composed of one or more colleges or

universities, one or more school districts, and at least two other organizations, agencies or businesses.

According to the APRs submitted by all grantees, in the second year of GEAR UP (2000-01), 237 GEAR

UP partnerships were serving almost 200,000 students, with nearly 90 percent of the students enrolled in

seventh or eighth grades. These students were evenly divided by gender and were predominately

members of minority groups. Hispanics were the largest group served (36 percent), followed by African

American students (30 percent) and white students (26 percent). Native Americans and Hawaiians were

approximately 5 percent of the participants, and Asians represented 3 percent. (See Figure 1.) Nineteen

percent of the students in participating schools had Individualized Education Plans compared with a

national estimate of 13 percent across all grades reported in 1998-99.7 Seventeen percent of the GEAR UP

students were classified as limited English proficient (LEP) compared to 9 percent of students nationally,

in all grades, in 1999-2000.8

 (See Figure 2.)

Source: 2000-01 Annual Performance Reports

Figure 1. Racial and ethnic composition of GEAR UP students.
6

The schools and students in the longitudinal study.9

 GEAR UP is aimed at increasing college

attendance among low-income students. To ensure that the program reaches the intended beneficiaries,

GEAR UP requires that 50 percent or more of the students at participating schools qualify for free or

reduced-price lunches under the National School Lunch Program. In fact, many of the schools in GEAR

UP have free or reduced-price lunch eligibility rates well in excess of 50 percent. The students in the

national evaluation attend schools where the rates at which students qualify for free or reduced-price

lunches start at 50 percent and rise to 95 percent, with an average rate of 66 percent. Nationally, 39

percent of students in 1999-2000 were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.10

Sources: National Evaluation of GEAR UP student record data; National Center for Education Statistics; and National Clearinghouse for

English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs.

Figure 2. Comparison of GEAR UP and national participation rates in special programs.

Schools that draw from communities with high rates of poverty often have high mobility rates as well.

While some of the schools in the evaluation indicate relatively stable student populations, especially

schools in rural areas, other schools report annual student turnover rates of 50 percent or greater. It may

be the case that many students who start the seventh grade in a GEAR UP participating school do not

finish seventh grade, or start the eighth grade, in the same school.
7

Student attitudes early in seventh grade. As they begin the seventh grade, many students in the GEAR

UP schools and the matched comparison schools participating in the national evaluation of GEAR UP

have similar plans regarding attending college. In a survey conducted by Westat prior to GEAR UP

students receiving services, students indicated that attending college is “very important” to them (84

percent of the GEAR UP students versus 83 percent in the comparison group). However, fewer students

in GEAR UP schools, compared to those in the comparison schools, indicated that they “will definitely go

to college” (51 percent, GEAR UP; 56 percent, comparison). In addition, fewer students in both GEAR

UP and comparison schools expect to enter college or a vocational school immediately after high school

(44 percent, GEAR UP; 47 percent, comparison). College costs are seen as the main reason for not

continuing with education among this low-income population, as cited by 42 percent of students at GEAR

UP schools and 41 percent of students at comparison schools. Nonetheless, one-half of students in both

schools expect to complete a college degree, and one-quarter anticipate a graduate or professional degree

after high school.

Parents of the study participants. More than one-half (58 percent, GEAR UP; 55 percent, comparison)

of the students in this study come from families with household incomes below $30,000.11 However,

despite their relatively low incomes and lack of college experience, the parents of students entering

seventh grade have high hopes for their children’s education. The survey of parents of seventh-grade

students in the national evaluation of GEAR UP study found that most (87 percent, GEAR UP; 88

percent, comparison) think their children will get some postsecondary education, and 76 percent (74

percent, GEAR UP; 78 percent, comparison) think their children will earn at least a bachelor’s degree.

The majority of parents did not attend college themselves. Fifty-four percent of parents of students at

GEAR UP schools and 51 percent of parents of students at comparison schools of parents did not receive

any postsecondary education. Only 9 percent parents of students at GEAR UP schools and 12 percent of

parents of students at comparison schools completed a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Services Students Receive

The visits to the projects in the national evaluation provided descriptive information on the full range of

activities and services undertaken as part of GEAR UP. In each of the projects, the site visitors

documented what was occurring as part of GEAR UP—describing the student and parent services, teacher

professional development opportunities, curriculum development, other school reforms efforts and any

other activities. This section of the report summarizes what we learned from the site visits about GEAR

UP services and other activities in the sample of 20 schools.

Supplemental Academic Support

Academic support in the form of tutoring is the most common service in GEAR UP. Tutoring can take

place both during the regular school day and during nonschool hours. It ranges from one-on-one or small

group assistance to computer-assisted instruction (CAI) labs that offer students an opportunity to practice

skills. Sometimes academic support is combined with other activities aimed at engaging students in

learning and in promoting college, such as sports and clubs. The most common academic support during

out-of-school hours is after-school tutoring. Several of the sampled projects offer Saturday academies that

include tutoring and a few offer tutoring in the morning before the school day begins. Unfortunately,

when tutoring and other services are provided outside of school hours, projects have difficulty attracting

students. In focus group interviews, students say that their reasons for not attending activities include

transportation problems and competition from other activities. Students also say that they are just too tired
8

after school. One or two projects in the evaluation require out-of-school tutoring prior to standardized

testing for students at risk of poor performance.

Academic support during school hours may focus on a specific course or on preparation for standardized

tests more often than out-of-school support. A teacher may use a tutor in the classroom to work with

individuals or small groups of students who need more assistance with a lesson. Whole classes or

individual students needing additional help may use a GEAR UP-supported computer lab where they

practice new skills. A few projects offer tutoring during lunch or study hall periods, when students can

receive more individualized attention with homework or classwork. Only a couple of projects indicate

that students are taken out of classes for tutoring, and none of the projects indicate “pullout” from a core

course. When pullouts do occur, students are excused from physical education or elective classes.

Across the projects in this evaluation, most academic support is provided to students who are having

academic problems or who have performed poorly on standardized tests. Most projects do not have the

staff needed to provide tutoring to all participants, although at least one project has tried to offer

enrichment services to students who do not need tutoring. Teacher recommendations play a major role in

deciding who receives academic support, both during school hours and out-of-school.

In their original designs, many of the projects had planned to provide one-on-one tutoring to most or all

students, much of it to be provided by college students or other volunteers from partner organizations or

the community. The projects experienced considerable difficulty in finding these volunteers for a variety

of reasons—

 College schedules and middle school schedules conflict.

 College students do not have transportation to schools or cannot commit to sufficient

volunteer hours.

 Many other programs compete for the same college and community volunteers.

 School districts have rules that constrain when tutoring may take place (e.g., limiting

volunteer tutoring to school hours but not allowing pullouts from classes) or slow the process

of recruitment (e.g., increasingly rigorous background checks).

As a result, many projects are turning to paid tutors. Projects are hiring regular teachers to work before or

after school or on Saturdays, using project staff as tutors, paying a limited number of college students

who then work part-time (e.g., through college work-study) and using high-performing high school

students who are paid a stipend.

The move away from volunteers to paid tutors may have unplanned benefits. If studies are correct,

volunteer tutors of the type originally envisioned may not have had much effect on student performance.12

Studies of the determinants of effective tutoring state that three conditions must be present: training of

tutors by experts, high “dosages” of tutoring and tutoring that follows class lesson plans. College students

who commit to a small number of hours of GEAR UP tutoring during study halls, lunch periods or after

school rarely receive expert training, have little contact with teachers or lessons and are unlikely to

provide intensive assistance. Paid tutors, on the other hand, often meet the conditions identified for

effective tutoring. Under GEAR UP, the training received by college and high school students who

provide tutoring ranges from a single two-hour session to a college course that provides certification, but

much of the training is limited to a few hours. A few projects use student teachers as tutors. The

longitudinal evaluation of GEAR UP will provide an opportunity to look at the relative effectiveness of

different providers of academic support, including teachers, GEAR UP staff (many of whom have
9

backgrounds in teaching, counseling or other helping professions), college students and high school

students. The evaluation will also consider the effects of different environments (e.g., classrooms,

Saturday academies and computer labs) and different approaches (e.g., small groups in classrooms, oneon-one homework help and CAI for standardized testing).

Guiding Students to College

The projects in the longitudinal study provide a variety of support services aimed at encouraging students

to plan for college. Depending on the project, these services include career and college fairs at schools

and colleges, mentoring, college visits, career and school guidance and special events. Career and

college fairs take place in almost all projects. They occur most often at the middle schools and involve

posters and information tables; visits and presentations from college officials, college students and

business representatives (some of whom are project partners); special games; and other college-related

activities. They may occur on a single day or may involve activities spread over a week or a month.

Sometimes, GEAR UP operates these fairs independently, but more commonly they are jointly sponsored

by GEAR UP and other programs (like School-to-Work). Fairs are generally schoolwide (or gradewide)

events and, in that sense, are capable of affecting all the students in the GEAR UP cohorts (or grades)

within a school.

All of the projects in the longitudinal study held at least one college visit in the 2000-01 school year, and

some organized multiple visits that year. Students who participated in the focus groups report that they

enjoy the college visits a great deal and that they are considering college more seriously as a result of the

visits. Several project staffs indicated that GEAR UP is responsible for starting college visits for seventhgrade students; before GEAR UP, such visits were not held or only eighth-graders were likely to visit

colleges. In the first year of GEAR UP, when implementation was not complete in many projects, it was

typical for all students in a grade to go on a single college visit, usually to a partner college for a half or a

full school day. In the second year, there was more diversity in visits. In some projects, all students went

on one visit, but selected, smaller groups of students went on additional college visits. Typically, these

students are selected on a first-come, first-served basis, but sometimes participation is based on

recommendations from teachers or others. We will have specific information about student participation

in these activities and will know more about their effects on student behavior and attitudes in upcoming

reports.

About one-third of the sampled projects operate either an after-school or a Saturday program that

combines tutoring or other academic assistance with career exploration, interest clubs or recreational

activities. These programs are most commonly called clubs, after-school academies, or Saturday

academies. After-school programs are typically held several times a week, and Saturday programs are

held from once a month to every Saturday. Most are staffed by GEAR UP staff, paid teachers or social

service professionals, although one is staffed by paid college students. Some of the programs are

extensions of offerings available prior to GEAR UP (under 21st-Century Schools, Title I or other

auspices). Typically, these programs are voluntary and sites reported generally low participation on a

regular basis.

As with tutoring, most of the GEAR UP projects in the longitudinal study planned to provide volunteer

one-on-one mentoring to all participants, and, as with tutoring, the inability to find volunteers has led to

reconsideration of that plan. Some projects have largely given up on providing one-on-one mentoring to

students, or they provide mentors to only a small percentage of students who request them or are referred
10

by teachers or others. Other projects have redefined mentoring to mean periodic meetings of a college

student or adult volunteer with a group of middle school students. Some project directors contend that

tutoring has the effect of mentoring as well. One project is using teachers as mentors, with each teacher

meeting with at least two students. This appears to be the only project in the study providing mentoring to

a relatively large number of GEAR UP participants, but still, fewer than one-half of the students in the

cohort are participating. If mentoring is defined as a caring, long-term (a year or more), one-on-one

relationship between a student and an adult, it is not clear at this point that any of the projects in the

longitudinal study offers, or will be able to offer, this service to more than a handful of students. If the

sample size is large enough, the longitudinal study will offer an opportunity to observe whether the small

percentage of participants who receive long-term mentoring show different outcomes from comparable

students who do not receive this service.

All GEAR UP projects in the longitudinal study provide college and career information to students, but

almost one-third of the projects in the longitudinal study provide systematic individual student guidance

to some or all students. In these projects, counseling is a major focus of service, with individual plans

developed for all students or for all students having academic or behavioral difficulties. These plans are

called student or career action plans, individual development plans or individual portfolios. In most of the

projects that provide this service, students meet individually with GEAR UP counselors to develop the

plans and may attend subsequent individual or small group sessions at least once a year. In one program,

teachers receive special training and serve as facilitators in individual guidance meetings with students

and parents. Projects reported that student plans are likely to include a list of the courses the student will

need to prepare for college, the results of career interest discussions or inventories, course grades, scores

on standardized tests and other data. In these projects, the GEAR UP counseling sessions may be the only

one-on-one counseling the students receive, as most of the schools report that regular counselors do not

have time for this level of one-on-one assistance, especially for seventh-graders.

Special events. In addition to college trips and career fairs, many of the GEAR UP projects hold a variety

of special events that are seen as opportunities to expand the horizons of program participants. Staff

members of the projects and teachers speak about the limited experience most of the students have had,

indicating that many have never traveled outside their neighborhoods or communities. Special events take

the form of trips to performances, museums and places of employment to name a few. These special event

trips are always voluntary. Only relatively small percentages of students in grade cohorts are likely to

participate in any single event. A few projects have taken small numbers of students on trips to distant

cities (including the nation’s capital). These exceptional trips are usually a reward for special activity or

behavior (e.g., participating in an essay contest). In one project, two eighth-grade students were selected

to travel to Japan during the summer as part of a cultural exchange program. Projects appear to vary

substantially in the numbers of special events they provide.

Summer programs. Academic assistance and college preparation are merged in many of the GEAR UP

summer offerings. In their first year, the GEAR UP partnership projects had plans for ambitious summer

offerings. Projects that had only begun to offer student services in the second half of that year held

summer programs that were considerably more intensive than their school year services. While some

offered primarily remedial education, others provided enrichment programs that combined instruction in

core subjects with trips, hands-on activities, cultural events and recreation. Services were offered at

colleges, middle schools and community agencies and were planned for three or more weeks. Even

though “slots” were limited, projects reported that most of the summer programs only attracted a limited

number of students. One session that aimed for 125 students attracted 25 to 30. A program in a school

with several hundred students enrolled 20 in its first summer program. Transportation was a major
11

problem in some projects, but even projects in which students could participate at a neighborhood school

or community center did not attract as many students as planned. Notable exceptions included a 10-day

residential program at a university and a one-week marine science institute operated by an existing

partnership of colleges and universities. In both of these summer programs, GEAR UP students joined

others attending programs that were not run by GEAR UP. Also successful in attracting students was a

one-month summer camp operated in conjunction with a summer school (mandatory for some students).

In spring 2001, when the second year site visits were conducted, the plans for summer 2001 called for less

remedial instruction and fewer weeks of service. All but two of the projects were planning a summer

program, but most programs were to be fewer than four weeks in length, focus on academics and offer

field trips and other events. Enrichment activities were to be offered, especially in science and

technology. All summer programs were to be voluntary, and projects had scaled back their expectations

about the numbers of students who might attend based on the prior year’s experience. Most expected

relatively small numbers of students—one-quarter to one-third of a grade cohort. A few projects had

established eligibility criteria as well and were planning to enroll only students who had demonstrated

good behavior during the school year or whose parents actively enrolled them in the session. Most

projects planned to enroll students on a first-come, first-served basis, if oversubscribed. A few projects

were planning parent activities in conjunction with the summer offerings for students, such as instruction

in how to help students with their homework.

Intensity of Supplemental Services

Much of the GEAR UP intervention is supplemental. Therefore, how much service or contact with the

project typical participants are likely to receive is an issue. The most intensive services, such as summer

camps, are voluntary and used by only small number of participants. Even without considering who uses

which services, we know that GEAR UP resources are limited. For those GEAR UP projects in the

longitudinal study, the typical grant expends about $650 of their federal resources per student. 13 This

does not include the matching funds they are required to secure.

The combination of the following factors suggests that the amount of GEAR UP contact that a “typical”

student experiences is likely to be modest. These factors are:

 The overall per participant dollar figure.

 The limited types of “all participant” services such as fairs and some college visits.

 The “targeting” of tutoring, which is the most common and intensive service.

 The voluntary nature of other more intensive services such as the summer programs.

Studies of supplemental programs repeatedly have shown that program effectiveness is directly related to

the amount of service students receive.14 For this reason, the longitudinal study of GEAR UP is paying

close attention to who receives each type of service (especially when participation is voluntary) as well as

how much service each participant receives.

The data also suggest that considerable variety is likely in the per-student contact hours both within and

across projects. The variation in intensity of services is both intentional on the part of some projects and

an unintentional result of individual projects’ designs in other cases. From the case studies, it appears that
12

the most common supplemental services offered to all students are relatively low-intensity ones, such as

week-long career fairs or one-day college visits (although activities related to college visits may extend

over longer periods). Most projects offer one career fair a year and one or two college visits for all

participants. Tutoring, while far more intensive, is used by a subset of students with academic need.

Project staff have indicated that the number of students participating in tutoring varies across projects

from one-quarter to three-quarters.

Almost one-third of the projects provide one-on-one guidance services to students with academic need.

However, guidance counselors reported that contact hours per participant are relatively small ranging

from less than one hour to about four or five hours a year, with sessions lasting from 30 minutes to one

hour. Additionally, the guidance hours received under GEAR UP are not duplicative of counseling

services already provided by schools because counselors reported insufficient time to meet with each

seventh-grade student each year. In programs in which GEAR UP offers a course (such as a science or

career class), the hours per enrollee are high but the percentage of a cohort enrolled in the course is often

low. Projects report that only one-quarter of a cohort or less may be enrolled in these courses (such as a

MESA or AVID class).15 The same holds true for the summer programs. The summer programs are

intensive, including full-day and even residential projects that last one to four weeks, but only one-quarter

of the cohort or less may enroll.

Only the projects that have a widespread effect on instruction, through reform of core curricula or

extensive in-service to improve instruction, are likely to provide a service (i.e., instruction) that affects an

entire cohort at a relatively intense level. As we will discuss in more detail later, one of the 20 projects in

the longitudinal study is currently offering a new curriculum in a core academic subject that affects

instruction for all students in a cohort. A few additional projects are embarked on reforms that may have

an effect on curricula for all or may affect all students through policy changes in the future (e.g., by

leading a district to mandate eighth-grade algebra for all students or by encouraging students to explore

career choices and use instructional software programs).

The GEAR UP program was specifically designed with enough flexibility to permit a project to develop

models of service that fit the needs of their school and its students within the cohort structure. The

varying intensities of services and differences in the services provided an opportunity to understand how

projects served a cohort of students. Most GEAR UP projects planned their offerings so that some

services were not intended to be provided to all students, especially remedial services. Further, resource

limitations meant that participation in many widely reported GEAR UP services was limited, voluntary or

both. Students and their parents elect to participate in services such as tutoring during nonschool hours,

afterschool or Saturday programs, mentoring, optional college visits, special events, and the summer

programs. Many of these services could not by offered to all students even if student and parent interest

was there because projects do not have the capacity to provide them (i.e., the staff resources and funds).

There is only one project among the 20 that, as a matter of policy, spends resources solely for those

supplemental services that can be provided equally to all students and purchases only materials that can

be used equally by all students. A second project provides enrichment services to all students who do not

receive tutoring. In short, the design of services and the resource levels mean that most GEAR UP

projects cannot provide the same services and service levels to everyone. These projects typically

evaluate the students to determine their individual needs and how best to serve them.
13

Services Parents Receive

Involving parents in GEAR UP. In addition to students, GEAR UP is charged with providing

information on postsecondary education to parents as well as promoting parent involvement in education.

The legislation calls for close contact with, and activities designed for, parents. Through the visits to the

projects included in the longitudinal study, a preliminary picture emerged about the relationship between

the GEAR UP projects and parents, as well as the status of parent services. With some notable exceptions,

the projects are experiencing difficulty in engaging parents in activities.

Staff members in more than one-half of the projects in the longitudinal study indicate that attracting

parents to meetings and events is quite difficult. In addition to sending out newsletters and bulletins,

projects have tried the following parent initiatives without much success in attracting large numbers of

parents:

 Parent and child workshops on college awareness or helping children study.

 Parent components in Saturday programs.

 Parent meetings or “nights.”

 GED classes.

 Parent auxiliaries (boards, alliances, committees).

Some project staff members have become frustrated with the lack of parent responsiveness, a viewpoint

echoed by teachers in the same project schools, who attributed poor attendance to parents’ lack of concern

with their children’s education. Parents, in contrast, saw themselves as involved in, and concerned about,

their children’s education.

About one-third of the projects we visited, reported that they are successfully reaching parents. Two types

of approaches seem to work in those projects.

 Four of the projects enroll parents in parent institutes. In three of these projects, the institutes

are operated by a contractor under a state GEAR UP grant. The fourth is operated as part of a

citywide effort to empower parents. Typically, the institutes are 9- or 10-week workshops that

provide parents with information and assistance to help their children prepare for college.

Those operated by the contractor rely on the contractor to recruit parents. Instruction is offered

in English and Spanish, and child care is provided. Parents “graduate” if they attend a certain

percentage of sessions. All four projects involved in institutes report large enrollments and

plans to hold more workshops next year.

 Two projects hold individual parent and child counseling sessions at school for all or most

of a cohort, and staff in an additional two projects make large numbers of home visits (100 or

more during the school year). In one case, the individual meetings with parents and their

children are “facilitated” by specially trained teachers with 90 percent of parents attending. In

the other projects, the parent sessions are operated by GEAR UP staff (including specialized

community liaisons). Although clearly not mandatory for parents, all of the projects make

strong efforts to impress upon parents how important these sessions are for their children’s

future.

Both of these types of approaches require considerable effort (i.e., staff resources) to organize, recruit

parents, schedule and run. The activities themselves give parents personal attention, provide inducements

to come (real or perceived) or make it easy to participate. This is particularly true of the home visits. They
14

also require parents to commit in advance to attending, and if they fail to attend, their absence is quite

visible.

Support Schools Receive

School reform. The most important distinction to emerge from the site visits about the services that

GEAR UP provides is between instructional or other school reform efforts that are part of the regular

curriculum and operation of the school and all other GEAR UP services. Each school selects its own

approach to serving an entire cohort of students. To address the comprehensive list of objectives for

GEAR UP, projects in the evaluation developed plans that included a broad array of services designed to

meet the requirements of the legislation and the application guidelines. Most projects in the national

evaluation provide varying amounts of direct assistance to students and have limited involvement in

curriculum or instruction at the schools. In most of these projects, students receive varying amounts of

services.

The school reform projects are interesting because they represent a distinct group of GEAR UP grants.

Among the 20 projects visited in the first and second years of the GEAR UP program, a few are fully or

partially involved in curricular or other school reform activities likely to engage all students or have a

visible impact on the schools that the GEAR UP participants attend.

 One project in the evaluation is undertaking a major curriculum reform effort. This joint

effort by the schools, district, community college and universities has resulted in new math and

language arts curricula for seventh and eighth grades as well as changes to school schedules

and texts. Teachers participated in drafting the reforms and received extensive paid training.

Resource teachers are present in the schools to demonstrate the curriculum and work with the

teachers on implementation. Respondents report that the new curricula are more rigorous, are

supplemented with additional help for students who are having difficulty, and offer more

challenging courses for advanced students. The project has also implemented other services

more typical of GEAR UP projects as a whole such as a college and career awareness

component during homeroom, weekend classes for seventh-graders who will take algebra in

eighth grade, after-school mentoring clubs, college visits and a summer college residential

program.

 A few of the other projects in the evaluation have components that augment the

instructional programs in the schools they serve but are not large-scale school reforms.

One project has used GEAR UP to expand a previously purchased program called NovaNET,

adding resource persons in computer labs and teacher training.16 Another project has introduced

two new courses, a science course and a study skills and career awareness course based on

AVID.17 These courses, however, are appended to the school day, and relatively few students

participate. In one project, the director played an important role in reform, helping to draft the

school’s improvement plan, but the GEAR UP services themselves remain supplemental. Two

projects have provided resources for teacher training to improve instructional abilities in core

subjects, and one has installed a computer-assisted instruction (CAI) lab in each school where

students can practice English, math and science lessons. One project has created school teams

that can decide how to spend school-level grant funds of more than $20,000 each year. Some of

the funds were used to purchase instructional assistance such as career information software

and for teacher training by a writing specialist. In these projects, as in the rest of the projects
15

visited, the greater focus of resources is on serving students directly by supplementing their

education with tutoring or other services.

One hypothesis is that where GEAR UP has an impact on the quality and rigor of instruction, it is more

likely to have an impact on student academic performance and, hence, preparation for college. If this is

true, then being able to affect the content and delivery of instruction seems preferable to providing

supplementary services both from the standpoint of intensity of intervention as well as from the

standpoint of making reforms of lasting value. If identifying the individual needs of students provides the

greatest benefit on academic performance, then providing supplemental services, an underlying premise

of GEAR UP, is warranted. The national evaluation will provide an opportunity to look at these

hypotheses, but there are some limits to what the study can measure. As noted above, there are few

projects in the group focusing on school reform efforts. Furthermore, although several projects may be

moving toward greater involvement in instruction in the participating middle schools, the cohort in the

longitudinal component of the national evaluation will be leaving middle school by the end of the 2001-

02 school year. Thus, these students may not experience the full impact of those reforms. Nonetheless, the

study can examine the early impact of those GEAR UP projects that seek to influence middle school

instruction on short-term student outcomes (such as performance in algebra or other core courses)

compared with projects that focus on other services.

Professional Development Opportunities. Most GEAR UP-supported professional development

activities appeared to be relatively limited and short term for the 20 projects we visited. Aside from the

one project that has introduced major curriculum development and a few others that have introduced new

courses or instructional and career software, most teacher in-service education is not linked to specific

GEAR UP curricula or other school reforms. Instead, projects have held one or more workshops each on a

wide range of topics such as using math manipulatives, teaching writing, managing classrooms or raising

teacher expectations about student performance. Projects may also encourage teachers to become more

professionally engaged by supporting teacher-selected in-service training workshops, classes at colleges

or attendance at professional meetings. One project provides partial subsidies for classes at a partner

university. Some projects purchase software for career information or tutoring and provide teachers with

the training to guide or manage their use. Although it is difficult to generalize, projects with strong

involvement of college or university education departments appear more able to offer teacher in-service

training directly (employing professors). Other projects employ specialists or subsidize teachers to pursue

their own professional development activities. Two projects had not undertaken any professional

development activities as of the spring 2001 site visits, but both had extensive plans for the 2001-02

school year.

Among the 20 projects, the amount of professional development supported by GEAR UP rose

dramatically from the first to the second year of the program. In the first year, many project staffs

reported that teachers in participating schools were skeptical of GEAR UP and viewed it as competing

with classroom instruction for the students’ time. As a result, many projects did not implement

professional development because staffs feared that teachers would view the efforts as criticism of their

practices. Much of that concern with teacher support appears to have abated by the end of the second

year, and projects now seem to be working with teachers to select in-service training, decide on project

instructional purchases (e.g., computers, classroom materials, textbooks, videos and software—career,

tutoring or instructional), and provide the training to use them. In addition, a few projects have introduced

mini-grant programs in which teachers can propose individual or team instructional improvements or

student activities, and GEAR UP provides the resources to implement them. In focus groups, teachers

report satisfaction with the professional development opportunities that GEAR UP provides. They also
16

indicate that GEAR UP staff members have been receptive to their recommendations for classroom

assistance, in-service education, special events and instructional purchases.

What remains to be seen is whether the mix of professional development activities implemented by

GEAR UP will have an impact on the students in the longitudinal study of the program. First, there is a

certain ad hoc quality to the selection of in-service offerings and considerable diversity across projects.

Furthermore, in many projects, GEAR UP professional development is voluntary on the part of teachers,

is supplemental to other in-service offerings and is probably not meaningful to examine apart from the

full range of available teacher education and training. In addition, as we have already noted, the cohorts in

the study may experience little of the impact of professional development now underway as they will be

leaving middle school at the end of the 2001-02 school year. Probably the most important issue the

longitudinal study can examine is the relative impact of GEAR UP’s support for teacher training to

implement major reforms in a few projects (core curriculum reform and introduction to NovaNET, AVID

or MESA courses).

Administering GEAR UP Partnerships

GEAR UP is designed to be a community-wide educational effort. GEAR UP seeks to draw on the

interests and expertise of a wide range of institutional actors with different perspectives on the schools

and their needs. As a demonstration effort with required matching funds, GEAR UP has also been

designed with a view toward the future, recognizing that after five years, the federal funds will end and

will need to be replaced with other resources. For both of these reasons, the partnership grants are

designed to engage school districts, colleges and universities, businesses, community and religious

organizations and others. Also implicit in GEAR UP is the assumption that a partnership is preferable to

unilateral action by schools and that there is an intrinsic benefit in cooperation among agencies with

different competencies, approaches and views of accountability to achieve academic goals.

The Partnership. GEAR UP requires the involvement of organizations, businesses or entities other than

school districts and colleges or universities; however, educational partners dominate most GEAR UP

projects in the longitudinal study. Although some projects began with ambitious plans to engage

noneducation partners in services, by the second year of the program only a few projects had identified

important roles for community agencies, religious organizations, businesses or other types of

noneducation partners. In a few projects, noneducation partners that had no clear role or could not provide

resources had been dropped and new partners added. New partners are likely to be associated with

education. New partners include additional colleges and organizations linked to particular educational

programs or services the project uses (such as an occupational skills training or a software program). In

addition, a few projects also engage social welfare agencies already actively involved in participating

schools (such as Communities in Schools, Inc.).

Decision-makers. Many projects began with plans for elaborate formal decision making among all

partners. They anticipated frequent partner meetings, sometimes augmented by subcommittees that would

meet and make recommendations to the partnerships. By the second year, the number of formal allpartner meetings appears to have diminished to only a few per year in most of the projects.

Subcommittees are rarely formal entities. Key partners, including colleges and school districts, are relying

more heavily on GEAR UP staff (project directors or site coordinators) to decide on, and carry out,

project operations. As projects have developed and grown, more of those staff positions have been shifted

from central locations to individual participating schools. This change in location has led to more
17

interaction with school staffs, enabling principals and teachers to play a greater role in deciding on, and

providing, services. Principals are also playing an important role in selecting GEAR UP school-site staff.

As already noted, more of the tutoring services are being delivered by teachers rather than college

students or other volunteers. In addition, school-level administrators and teachers are working directly

with GEAR UP school-level staff to decide what services to provide and which students will receive

them. Principals or other school personnel are also participating in project steering committees along with

district officials. All of these changes mean that schools are playing an increasingly important role in

project design and operations. For some projects this change also means that district officials are

becoming less involved in project operations.

As for other sources of influence on project design and operations, most of the projects point to the

central importance of the original federal grants application in deciding how to organize their projects and

in determining what services to offer. The persons who drafted the application tended to be college,

university or school district officials or grant writers who relied heavily upon the announcement to design

project governance and services. Not only do the goals of the projects reiterate the announcement, but the

initial plans to engage many noneducation partners and offer a wide array of services (rather than

engaging a few partners and limiting the services) also are probably largely attributable to the

announcement. What projects have found, however, is that some parts of the original announcement have

proven difficult to implement. In particular, the concept of a broad-based decision-making partnership,

the emphasis on mentoring, the requirement for parental involvement and reaching all the students in a

cohort have all proven problematic.

Apportioning GEAR UP Resources. The vast majority of GEAR UP resources are used to provide

staffing for the projects. Most of the projects in the longitudinal study report that they spend threequarters or more of their federal resources on salaries and benefits of project staff and contractors who

manage and provide services. Reflecting the average $713,000 size of GEAR UP partnership grants, most

GEAR UP projects have relatively small professional staffs that are engaged in design and administrative

tasks as well as direct provision of services. Typically, GEAR UP staffs in the second year of the grant

include:

 A full-time project director or other day-to-day administrator who rarely provides direct

services to students.

 Possibly a second full-time administrative or curriculum professional who combines

administrative and service responsibilities.

 A full-time site coordinator or resource teacher at each participating middle school (who

administers and usually provides some mix of classes, tutoring, counseling, workshops, lab

supervision and parent services).

 Possibly other part-time school-level staff (e.g., teachers who tutor after school or who

participate in the summer program and college-student volunteers or paid assistants).

Several projects engage consultants, almost all of whom are part-time contractors, to develop curricula,

provide teacher in-service training, conduct evaluations or provide other services. In addition, principals

and teachers provide “match” staffing contributions to the projects. There are unusual staffing

arrangements at some projects, however. For example, in one single-school project, the principal is also

the project director; there is a GEAR UP counselor-consultant; and six teachers are paid for eight hours a
18

week each to provide an additional period of GEAR UP initiated instruction each day. As already noted,

over time many projects have moved greater shares of staff to the school level than originally anticipated.

A few projects are far more heavily staffed. For example, a one-school project reports a full-time project

director, a full-time site coordinator (co-director), a full-time coordinator of Saturday activities, three fulltime case managers providing guidance services to at-risk students, and six part-time staff for the

Saturday program. In another project, two participating middle schools have 11 professional GEAR UP

staff, including two substitute teachers so that regular teachers can be freed up for curriculum planning

and in-service training. In addition to a full-time project director, one project has three full-time

professional positions at each of three participating middle schools. The evaluation will be in a position to

assess if larger numbers of professional staff per school have a substantial effect on the intensity of

student involvement with GEAR UP and hence student outcomes.

GEAR UP and the School Environment

Any new program faces implementation challenges, and GEAR UP has been no exception. In the first

year of GEAR UP site visits, it was apparent that some of the schools in the longitudinal study had

serious educational problems. They were characterized by poor academic performance, high staff

turnover and low teacher morale. Some were in danger of state takeover or other corrective action

because of poor student performance over many years. Some had been selected for GEAR UP specifically

because the project held the promise of additional resources for school improvement, but the risks of

placing new projects in such troubled environments were great. Initially, GEAR UP staff in many projects

told us that there was considerable teacher resistance to GEAR UP. In particular, teachers saw GEAR UP

as having the potential to take time away from academics just when schools were under pressure to raise

student performance on standardized tests. GEAR UP staff members were concerned that the projects

would have great difficulty gaining acceptance in the schools, some of which had not volunteered for

GEAR UP participation.

From the second year visits, site visitors report that the status of GEAR UP in the schools appears to have

improved markedly. In a few cases, GEAR UP staff members are directly involved in efforts at school

improvement, helping to draft plans for schools in danger of state takeover or supporting major reforms

(such as NovaNET or new curricula). More commonly, GEAR UP resources provide substantial amounts

of tutoring to students in preparation for state assessment tests. Several schools have new principals who

are more inclined to pursue reforms than their predecessors and view GEAR UP as an opportunity to

upgrade educational offerings and professional development opportunities. In a few projects, GEAR UP

is part of a district or citywide effort at educational improvement, parent empowerment or other reform. If

those we spoke with are indicative of teachers as a whole, concerns about the program, especially the

concern that it will take time away from academics, have greatly declined. Some teachers felt that GEAR

UP is creating a more positive climate in the school.
19

Part Two: State GEAR UP Projects

About one-third of the GEAR UP resources are spread across 30 state projects with the average award

being about $2.4 million for 2001-02. During the second year of GEAR UP (2000-01), there were 28

GEAR UP state grantees serving more than 165,000 students, with nearly one-half (47 percent) of the

students being in seventh or eighth grades. According to the Annual Performance Reports submitted by

these grantees, students were evenly divided by gender and were predominately members of minority

groups. Whites were the largest group served (40 percent), followed by African American students

(22 percent) and Hispanic students (20 percent). Approximately 7 percent of the students were Asian.

American Indians and Alaska Natives were about 7 percent, and 4 percent were Native Hawaiian or other

Pacific Islander. Twenty-one percent of the students were identified as LEP.18 This is higher than

nationally reported numbers, which indicated that in 1999-2000 roughly 9 percent of all public school

students were LEP.19

As noted earlier, the state projects have fewer design constraints than partnerships and greater latitude

with respect to determining participants and deciding what to offer. Because the designs of the state

projects are all quite different, and, hence, “typical” student assistance varies a great deal, the national

evaluation of GEAR UP is not including these projects and their student participants in the longitudinal

study. Nonetheless, the national evaluation staff has twice visited a random sample of seven state projects

drawn from the 21 states that were awarded grants in the first grant cycle. Based on these seven states, we

have identified two distinct approaches to GEAR UP project administration—projects administered

directly by state agencies and projects administered primarily through subgrants designed much like

partnership grants. This section of the report briefly describes the key features of both types of state

project. It then provides some general observations about the common features of the seven state grants.

Grants Where All or Most Services Are Administered by State Agencies

Four of the seven grantees visited administer the GEAR UP services directly from the state agency where

the grant is housed. In one state, the governor’s office is the lead agency, in partnership with the state

commission on higher education and other nongovernmental organizations. The project serves one highpoverty, low-performance middle school in each of nine school districts or about 2,000 students in the

first year. There are 11 full-time equivalent GEAR UP counselors at the nine schools, providing tutoring,

career awareness and some instruction during school hours using state-designated curricula. Scholarship

funds have been placed in a trust for use in later years. In another state, the GEAR UP project is

administered by the state agency that provides college financial assistance through 16 regional entities

that recruit and enroll seventh- and eighth-grade students throughout the state in the 21st-Century

Scholars Program. The program guarantees that any low-income eighth-grade student, who graduates

from high school with a 2.0 GPA, does not use drugs or alcohol or commit a crime, enrolls in a state

institution and applies on time for financial aid will receive free college tuition. The state is using GEAR

UP scholarship funds to expand summer school scholarships before the freshman year and the summer

after the first year of college and to introduce mentor scholarships that enable college juniors and seniors

to mentor freshmen and sophomores.

Grants Where All or Most Services Are Conducted through Subgrants to Schools or Districts

The remaining three projects from the sample have awarded grants (i.e., subgrants of federal funds) to

schools or districts within the state to operate GEAR UP projects. For example, in one state, the regents
20

for higher education award small six-month planning grants and 12-month implementation grants of

$15,000 each to 30 high-poverty school districts each year to meet locally identified needs—for tutoring,

mentoring, homework hotlines, reading programs, entrance exam preparation, summer school or

professional development. Not all funds are awarded to districts, however. The project has also provided

workshops on interpreting state assessment test results, supported summer math academies at colleges and

developed instructional videos, parent guides and television and radio commercials. GEAR UP

scholarship funds are augmenting the state scholarships by filling the “unmet need” gap and will be spent

as students now in GEAR UP enter college. In another state, the state education agency (SEA) has made

subgrants to partnerships of one to three middle schools, a high school and a college. These subgrants

provide GEAR UP services in 21 middle schools with high rates of NSLP eligibility and low student

mobility. State officials chose schools with low mobility rates because they believed it would be

impossible for GEAR UP to have effects in schools with high student turnover rates. School-level

activities are not fully implemented yet but have included career days, college visits, special events,

Saturday programs and limited professional development. In addition, the SEA has undertaken statewide

activities that include technical assistance to participating schools, a statewide student conference and

parent workshops. Last year the state obtained a scholarship waiver. It plans to award the first

scholarships in fall 2001 for in-state tuition and room and board after other state scholarship sources are

exhausted.20

Common Features. Most of the seven state grants visited:

 Provide (or will provide) student services similar to those provided by the partnerships.

 Use a “cohort” approach (only one focuses primarily on low income students within

participating schools).

 Try to engage parents in their children’s education.

 Provide some professional development opportunities for teachers.

Given the greater design flexibility in state grants, it appears that most state grantees have, nonetheless,

chosen a course of action much like the partnership grantees. With one or two exceptions, however, it has

taken these seven states longer to decide on and implement services than it has taken the partnerships. The

projects with subgranting arrangements were not all fully operational in spring 2001. Further, the per

student resources are lower in the state projects than in the partnerships.

Finally, most of the scholarship funds awarded to states are not being spent at this time. Although the

majority of the seven projects are administered by higher education agencies, almost all of the seven

states have obtained waivers allowing them to spend all or a large share of their scholarship funds when

students who are now in ninth grade (2001-02 school year) or lower reach college age—four or five years

from now.

Due to the variation in approaches taken by the state grantees, the decision was made to visit a new set of

seven states during spring 2002.
21

Endnotes

 

1

 See, for example, C. Howley, M. Strange, and R. Bickel. (2000). Research about school size and school

performance in improvished communities. Washington, D.C.: Office of Educational Research and Improvement,

U.S. Department of Education.

T.R. Guskey. (1997). The relationship between socioeconomic characteristics and school-level performance

assessment results. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association

(Chicago, Ill., March 1997).

C. R. Howley and R. Bickel. (2000). When it comes to schooling . . . small works: school size, poverty, and

student achievement. Randolph, Vt.: Rural School and Community Trust.

2

 Sufficient information to calculate per student funding amounts for the 1999 and new 2000 grantees was reported

by 218 grantees (92 percent) in their 2001 Annual Performance Reports (APRs).

3

 Priority students are defined as students in preschool through twelfth grade who are eligible to be counted under

Section 1124(c) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (Title I), for free or reduced-price meals

under the National School Lunch Act or for assistance under Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF),

authorized by Title I of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1966.

4

 A random sample of these projects was selected stratifying by approach, by fiscal agent and by whether or not the

project was located in a state with a state GEAR UP grant. Only projects planning to serve a new seventh-grade

cohort in fall 2000 were included in the final selection so that baseline measures of student attitudes and

aspirations could be obtained. Consequently, the sample is not statistically representative of all GEAR UP

grantees.

5

 Of the 20 sites visited, three projects are not participating in the longitudinal study. Reasons for withdrawing

include delays in obtaining district approval to conduct research and difficulty obtaining parental permission to

survey students as well as access student records.

6

 The grant funding cycle for FY 2001 was Sept. 1, 2000, through Aug. 31, 2001. Grantees were required to submit

their APRs for FY 2001 by May 1, 2001.

7

 National Center for Education Statistics. (June 2000). Statistics in brief. Overview of public elementary and

secondary schools and districts: School year 1998-99. Washington, D.C.: Office of Educational Research and

Improvement.

8

 Percent of students identified as limited English proficient reported by the National Clearinghouse for English

Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs.

9

 Only 14 projects participating in the longitudinal study submitted complete student background and participation

data in time to be included in this report. The projects that withdrew from the longitudinal study were visited in

2001 and are included in the site visit information in this report.

10 U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), “Public

elementary-secondary school universe survey,” 1999-2000, and “Local education agency universe survey,” 1999-

2000.
22

 11 By comparison, children from families with incomes at or below 130 percent of the poverty level are eligible for

free meals (breakfasts, lunches and snacks) under the National School Lunch Program. Those with incomes

between 130 percent and 185 percent of the poverty level are eligible for reduced-price meals. For the period July

1, 2000, through June 30, 2001, 130 percent of the poverty level was $22,165 for a family of four; 185 percent

was $31,543 (Federal Register, Vol. 65, No. 65).

12 See, for example, M. Invernizzi and M. Ouellette. (2001). Improving children’s reading ability through volunteer

reading tutoring programs. Issue Brief. Washington, D.C.: Center for Best Practices, National Governors

Association.

13 The $650 is for all services, not just student services. It covers services for parents and teachers as well as

curriculum reform efforts plus overall project operations.

14 See, for example, B.A. Wasik. (1997). Volunteer tutoring programs. A review of research on acheivement

outcomes. Report No. 14. Baltimore, Md.: Center for Research on Education of Students Placed At Risk. Funded

by: Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. See also R. H. Fenske, C.

A. Geranios, J. E. Keller, and D. E. Moore. (1997). Early intervention programs. Opening the door to higher

education. Washington, D.C.: ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education. (ED 412 863).

15 MESA stands for the Math, Engineering and Science Achievement. This is a “hands-on” program that has been

developed by several university engineering departments. AVID stands for Advancement Via Individual

Determination. This program is designed to help underachieving students with high academic potential prepare

for entrance into a four-year college.

16 NovaNET is a software program that links educators with technology and teaching methods. It helps students

study for courses and standardized tests. Students are also provided laptops under this program.

17 In AVID, college and middle or high school partners jointly develop the curriculum for an academic class. This

class is designed to provide low-income students and first-generation college students with academic assistance.

AVID provides information about college preparatory courses and financial aid, tutoring and other encouragement

to enroll in college preparatory courses and apply for college. The structure for AVID includes a regularly

scheduled academic elective, a rigorous curriculum, structured tutorials, parent training and a site team composed

of the AVID coordinator, the principal, core academic teachers and students.

18 Information on the number of Limited English Proficient (LEP) students was reported by 16 of the 28 states.

19 Reported by the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational

Programs.

20 Projects that are serving priority students and those that were grantees under the National Early Intervention

Scholarship and Partnership (NEISP) program served 12th-grade students during 2000-01. Those students who

enrolled in college were eligible for GEAR UP scholarships in fall 2001.