MDRC: Project GRAD Overview, Design, Publications, and Resources
Launched in Houston in 1993 by James Ketelsen, retired CEO of Tenneco, and since expanded to 12 additional school districts, Project Graduation Really Achieves Dreams (GRAD) combines a variety of promising reforms to improve instruction and raise student achievement in schools that serve primarily minority and low-income students. With the overarching objective of closing the achievement gap between such students and their white, more economically advantaged counterparts, the initiative seeks to help students develop the skills and aspirations required to complete a college preparatory curriculum and move on to postsecondary education.
Project GRAD operates on the premise that high schools, to be successful, must build on the success of the middle schools from which they draw their students, and that these middle schools must build on the achievements of the elementary schools from which their students come. Thus, Project GRAD is designed to operate not only at the high school level but also in the elementary and middle schools that constitute the “feeder system” for high schools.
