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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 highpoverty 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, collegereadiness 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

 

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

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 associated2

 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. 

 

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

 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. AfricanAmerican 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. 

 

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.