Teaching kids to climb the ladder of success

May 18, 2002

When Toby Leonard talks about his work with Upward Bound, it's hard to credit that this long-running federal program could be facing budget cutbacks.

Upward Bound, funded through the U.S. Department of Education, serves students from low-income families who are in the first generation to go to college. There are 600 programs nationwide, with 57,000 students altogether. Leonard, who is the academic adviser for Upward Bound at Minnesota State University at Mankato, has 75 of them.

Upward Bound has a strong academic component. At Mankato, students get three days a month of tutoring and counseling at their home schools, and one Saturday a month at the university campus. In the summer, they spend six weeks studying on campus.

The goal is to give them the skills and the motivation they need to continue their education after high school, so their children won't need a program like this (though Mankato gets lots of younger siblings, Leonard said). Over the last five years, 75 percent of the students who entered the program stayed with it until they graduated, and 90 percent of those have gone on to college or other post-secondary training.

But the program also introduces students to the wider social and cultural world they can live in if they succeed educationally. They eat at nice restaurants and are encouraged to try something other than hamburgers. They go on field trips and attend cultural events.

The more experienced students help the newer ones learn what's expected of them. Punctuality, for instance; if they're 15 minutes late, they can expect to spend half an hour weeding the garden.

If it all sounds like a crash course in how to be middle class, I don't think anyone should be apologetic about that.

At Metropolitan State College in Denver, which has had an Upward Bound program since 1974 and graduates 20 to 25 students a year, director Charles Maldonado says the goal is "a generational improvement in class standing."

In other words, Upward Bound is the exact opposite of intergenerational welfare dependence.

So why is its funding in jeopardy? The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that the Bush administration proposed to keep its budget at $296.6 million, with no adjustment for inflation, and called it "ineffective."

A 1999 study by Mathematica Policy Research found that when Upward Bound students were compared with a control group, the program had no effect on whether students graduated from high school or attended college. It was rarely successful in keeping them in the program all through high school, with the average student participating for 19 months.

Metro State was part of the Mathematica study, Maldonado said, but their typical student is in the program for two or three years, spending 750 extra hours a year in program-related activities. The high school graduation rate for participants is 93 percent; over 17 years, 77 percent of participants have either completed their post-secondary education or are currently enrolled.

Other critics claim Upward Bound's focus on social and cultural development is based on a theory that improved self-esteem will lead to better academic performance. Well, that is indeed a dubious theory. But neither Leonard nor Maldonado espoused it; neither of them said anything at all about "self-esteem."

This summer's program at Metro State will focus on math and science; students will build robots, launch rockets and study astronomy. "Our focus used to be just getting them through," Maldonado said. "Now we're starting to show them these new career options."

Some Upward Bound programs are just beginning. This is the third year for the program at University of Colorado at Denver, and the first two students graduate this spring. This summer it will sponsor an exchange program with students from Puerto Rico.

If indeed Upward Bound has a few successful programs among a sea of mediocre ones, it wouldn't be the only federal program for which that's true. Head Start is another, with no demonstrable benefits, yet its funding is sacrosanct.

Upward Bound graduates testify to its importance in their lives, and many come back to mentor current students. It's a recipe for success.