Changes are in the pipeline for Upward Bound, a federal high school program administered locally by UVA that is designed to increase college attendance rates for those most at risk: low-income students and those whose parents didn’t attend college. Local programs stand to lose autonomy in how they recruit high school students to receive Upward Bound benefits, which range from tutoring to college visits, based on a U.S. Department of Education proposal issued July 3.
“Is this another ploy to eliminate Upward Bound?” asks Leah Puryear, director of the UVA Upward Bound program, which serves 75 students during the academic year and 60 during the summer.
The proposal comes after the Bush Administration questioned the 40-year old program’s effectiveness and tried to cut Upward Bound from the budget in February. The federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rated the program “ineffective.” (Upward Bound was not alone: The OMB rated two-thirds of 74 programs run by the Department of Education “not performing.”)
The proposed changes mandate who and when local programs recruit. Thirty percent would now have to be at “high academic risk for failure,” which either means they did not pass reading and math state tests in eighth grade or that they have a GPA below 2.5. Further, programs could only recruit eighth or ninth graders.
The changes were immediately condemned by the Council for Opportunity in Education, a nonprofit that helps administer and advocate for Upward Bound. Their concern? That increasing “high risk” students would jeopardize the program’s effectiveness.
But even those heavily involved with Upward Bound are unsure how great a change this will be. “Many programs are already configured so that they’re targeting more high risk students,” says Susan Beaudoin, deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Education, though she couldn’t specify how many programs already fit the new requirements.
UVA’s Puryear believes her program is already effective. She cites its 100 percent high school graduation rate and college attendance rates that vary from 95 to 100 percent. “This is another attempt to limit the progress for Upward Bound by removing the control that each and every program has as far as recruiting students goes,” she says.
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