Increasing the College Preparedness of At-Risk Students

Abstract

emerged in the late 1990s as a comprehensive outreach program seeking to enhance awareness of and readiness for college among low-income middle school students. After controlling for students ’ preprogram test scores and school characteristics, findings indicate that students participating in GEAR UP and in a comparison group gained in their reading and mathematics test scores. Analyses, however, found no sta-tistically significant 2-year effects of program participation on students ’ reading scores, although a slight, nonsignificant trend across the study period suggested some closing of the statistically significant gap between the 2 groups in the baseline year. Key words: outreach programs, HLM, readiness for college, middle school, unprivileged students