MDRC's Evaluation of Project GRAD
From MDRC:
Project Graduation Really Achieves Dreams (GRAD) is an ambitious education reform initiative designed to improve academic achievement, high school graduation rates, and rates of college attendance for low-income students.
Launched first in Houston, Texas, it is an unusual reform model in that it intervenes throughout an entire "feeder pattern" of elementary and middle schools that send students into each Project GRAD high school.
Project GRAD schools at all levels build support in the community for school improvement and college attendance, implement a classroom management program, provide students with access to needed social services, and receive special support from local Project GRAD organizations.
MDRC --- a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization --- conducted an independent evaluation to determine the effects of Project GRAD by comparing the changes in student outcomes at Project GRAD schools with changes at similar, non-Project GRAD schools in the same districts.
The results of this study can be found in two reports --- Charting a Path to Graduation focuses on 52 elementary schools in Houston and in three other school districts (Atlanta, Georgia; Columbus, Ohio; and Newark, New Jersey), and Striving for Student Success focuses on three high schools in Houston and on high schools in two other school districts (Columbus and Atlanta).
The very nature and complexity of the Project GRAD feeder system intervention, which posits that students would need to be exposed to the program over many years, combined with a limited amount of follow-up in the expansion sites, created a challenging set of conditions for a meaningful evaluation.
While the Houston feeder patterns provide a reasonable test of the intervention, the results for Atlanta, Columbus, and Newark should be treated as more provisional.
To accomplish its goals of improving academic achievement, high school graduation rates, and rates of college attendance for low-income students, Project GRAD may need to make a strategic choice: to intervene directly in classrooms (on its own or in partnership with curricular reformers) or to target high schools where curricular reform is already under way and where Project GRAD's services and scholarship offer would provide added value.
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