Can TRIO & GEAR UP continue to coexist? Some education advocates say the two programs are different but both worthy of support. Others question whether there is really a need for both - Cover Story - Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs

Black Issues in Higher Education, Dec 6, 2001 by Cheryl D. Fields

When Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) was signed into public law by President Bill Clinton in 1998, many in the postsecondary and pre-college communities applauded. The initiative added what they considered a critical missing piece to the federal government's array of efforts to extend college opportunity to low-income students -- the middle school piece. Moreover, GEAR UP provided secondary school systems with a financial incentive to ensure that every child was exposed to a pre-college curriculum.

Today, GEAR UP programs serve more than 1 million students, in nearly every state. It has joined TRIO as a major player in the federal government's multimillion dollar arsenal of programs aimed at closing the gap between the haves and have-nots in education.

But 2001 has delivered GEAR UP some of its greatest challenges. Not only has the program received a cold shoulder from some key leaders in the higher education community, the Bush administration also has demonstrated tepid interest -- if not outright hostility -- toward the program. A few people even wonder whether GEAR UP will continue to coexist with TRIO.

"There is every indication that GEAR UP is working well," says U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., the program's first and perhaps most ardent legislative champion in Washington. Fattah introduced the GEAR UP concept to the inside-the-Beltway legislative and policy-making communities by promoting a program model of the same name that had operated successfully in his Philadelphia home district for years. Fattah admits that the federal program has faced some challenges in the past year, but he remains convinced that it will not only endure, it will continue to thrive.

"The Congress has been strong about GEAR UP," Fattah says, pointing to decisions by the House of Representatives and the Senate this year to augment the program's budget for fiscal year 2002 even after the Bush administration requested a 23 percent budget cut. At the same time, the Bush administration proposed to increase funding to TRIO by 6.8 percent. By press time, the final education budget had yet to be signed.

One reason for Fattah's enthusiasm is the tremendous response GEAR UP has received from both within and outside the education community. In 1999, the first year that GEAR UP grants were awarded, nearly 700 applications were submitted by more than 4,500 organizations, including nearly 20 percent of the nation's colleges and universities. More than $120 million in grants were awarded that year: 164 in the form of partnership programs and another 21 in grants to individual states (see GEAR UP sidebar, pg. 29). The following year, the Clinton administration and Congress raised the program's budget to $200 million, awarding another 73 partnership grants and seven state grants.

Before GEAR UP, most federal programs aimed at disadvantaged students targeted those at the high school and undergraduate levels. The majority of these are bundled under the TRIO umbrella (see TRIO sidebar, pg. 29). But the experience of these programs, together with decades of research around the country, indicated that intervening at the middle school level had the potential to produce even greater results. Waiting until high school to begin preparing students for college is often too late, primarily benefiting only those already engaged in college preparatory coursework. Such late intervention can certainly enhance the number of low-income students who decide to pursue a college education, but often they are already so far behind academically that the need for remediation once they enroll in college can be great.

"GEAR UP is built on a lot that has been learned from TRIO," Fattah says. "It involves an intimate relationship between the college and middle school in partnership with other community players.

TRIO officials did not return calls by Black Issues seeking comment.

COMPLEMENTARY OR COMPETITIVE?

Having emerged from the War on Poverty in the 1960s, the earliest TRIO programs, such as Upward Bound, targeted students at the undergraduate and high school levels. Now, more than three decades later, while some TRIO grantees have worked with middle school students for years, most still focus on high school students and undergraduates.

The age of students that TRIO works with is not the only factor that distinguishes it from GEAR UP, however.

"One model (of intervention) is to go into a high school and take five or so young people and say, `OK we're going to help get these kids ready for college,'" Fattah says of TRIO, which emphasized a student-centered approach to intervention. With GEAR UP, he says, "you go to the whole group of kids and say, `all of you can make it.'"

Hector Garza, director of the National Council for Community and Education Partnerships, says the issue isn't whether one approach is better than the other.

"We believe both are worthy of support," Garza says. "I argue that the more we invest in low-income communities and improving the education of these students, the better our communities are going to be."