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$700,000 Grant to Expand College Readiness Program

Posted on: Wednesday, 21 June 2006, 15:00 CDT

By Stacey Palevsky, Tri-City Herald, Kennewick, Wash.

Jun. 21--When Conan Viernes started work as coordinator of a college-readiness program last year, he didn't get much direction.

"They gave me $100,000 and pretty much said, 'Here, spend it and get the kids to college,' " said Viernes, who coordinates the national program GEAR UP for Toppenish middle and high schools.

Thanks to a nearly $700,000 grant to the Mid-Columbia chapters of GEAR UP, school coordinators like Viernes no longer will have to reinvent the wheel.

Seattle-based College Spark Washington (formerly the Education Assistance Foundation) awarded the grant. It represents three-quarters of the total funding allocated to Washington education organizations.

The money will allow the Washington State University Tri-Cities GEAR UP program to extensively research successful college prep methods, document them and distribute its findings to GEAR UP programs across the state and country.

"It would have definitely helped me (when I started) to have that information," Viernes said.

GEAR UP stands for Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs. It targets students from low-income families in grades six through 12 and helps prepare them to attend college by providing tutoring, counseling, college visits and test-preparation courses. Schools can participate if more than 50 percent of their students receive free and reduced lunch.

President Clinton started the initiative in 1999. Since then, about $1.8 billion has been funneled through the U.S. Department of Education to GEAR UP.

The program served 1.5 million students in 2005 alone. In the Mid-Columbia, it served 5,480 students. The WSU program's partners include seven school districts -- College Place, Touchet, Walla Walla, Moses Lake, Warden, Prescott and Soap Lake.

Despite its size, the program doesn't have centrally-located and accurate information about how to best reach out to kids and help them succeed after high school. The program is flexible and allows partner schools and districts to develop their own approach to college readiness.

Genoveva Morales-Ledesma, director of GEAR UP at WSU Tri-Cities, said the program's flexibility is a big reason for its success. But it's time for GEAR UP coordinators to have an easily accessible reference when starting or changing programs.

"Each GEAR UP site is unique because of the community they serve," said Christine McGabe of College Spark. "But it's important that the information be disseminated around the state."

The grant also will bring together GEAR UP and Skagit Valley, Columbia Basin, Big Bend and Walla Walla community colleges to develop recruiting information that can be handed out to middle-schoolers and their parents.

Morales-Ledesma said most colleges tailor their brochures to high school juniors and seniors, but that the best time to start talking to kids about college is in middle school. Yet there is minimal age-appropriate or culturally appropriate material to give to younger kids, she said.

"There's no equation to get kids to college," Viernes said. "But there are things that work effectively, and we need to share those ideas."

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Copyright (c) 2006, Tri-City Herald, Kennewick, Wash.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Tri-City Herald

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