IOWA CITY, Iowa—Many low income students who are struggling academically don’t feel they need assistance to improve their academic achievement, according to ACT’s recent report, Core Research Program: Student Baseline Data.
The report compares the academic achievement and college aspirations of low-income eighth graders who attended schools participating in the federally-funded Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) to similar students in non-GEAR UP schools. About two-thirds of students in each group felt that they did not need academic help, despite how few met the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks. Over 40 percent in each group met none of the four ACT benchmarks (English, math, reading and science), and only about 35 percent met more than one.
“Low-income students, who represent more than 40 percent of students under the age of 18 in the U.S., are often unaware of how much their academic achievement levels impact their readiness for college,” said Jim Larimore, ACT chief officer for the advancement of underserved learners. “The findings in our future reports that use these data will provide crucial insight into the effectiveness of GEAR UP, a widely-used federal program aimed at reversing the tide of preparation and postsecondary achievement for these students.”
The report’s baseline data will be used by ACT to lead a longitudinal study examining the relationships between academic outcomes and GEAR UP programs. It is the second in a series of several studies ACT is producing as part of its contribution to the College and Career Readiness Evaluation Consortium (CCREC), a collaborative, multiyear effort to better understand GEAR UP programs and their effectiveness in improving the academic readiness of students for postsecondary education.
Key findings from the current report include the following:
- About 40 percent of low-income students from both GEAR UP and non-GEAR UP schools have parents or guardians with no college experience.
- Most students in each group are not on track to be academically ready for college by the time they graduate from high school.
- The majority of students in each group — about two thirds — plan to obtain a bachelor’s or graduate degree.
In addition to ACT, CCREC members include 14 state GEAR UP grants, along with the National Council for Community and Education Partnerships (NCCEP). The joint project allows the partners to link various types of data to show the connection between GEAR UP services and educational outcomes of 120,000 students who use those services across the 14 CCREC states: Arizona, Idaho, Kentucky, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming.