Upward Bound Gives Students an Extra Push on Road to College

Carlos Contreras never did like school. His grades were “bombers.” The classroom was the place he longed to escape.

“I used to ditch school all the time,” said Contreras, a student at Sylmar High School.

But the exuberant 17-year-old senior has recently turned his grades around. He is now pulling A’s instead of the F’s and C’s of his junior year. He has missed only two days of school this year. No longer headed for failure at high school, Contreras is planning a college career and considering a major in engineering.

For 16-year-old Kari Wellington, grades have never been a problem. But she, also, was having difficulty at school. Wellington was a loner. Shy and unsure of herself, she barely spoke to other students. She was confused about herself and her studies lacked direction.

“I didn’t know where I wanted to be,” said Wellington, a junior at Kennedy High School in Granada Hills.

Overcame Shyness

But Wellington, too, has changed. No longer shy, she has an extrovert’s sense of humor. She has developed a sense of purpose, and plans to study child psychology when she goes to college.

She laughed. “I feel funny saying that,” Wellington said. “My friends would think it was weird.”

Wellington and Contreras are two of the 70 students who attend a highly successful but relatively little-known academic enrichment program based at California State University, Northridge. The federally funded program, one of 398 similar programs on campuses across the country, is called Upward Bound.

All 398 Upward Bound programs are run separately and each has its own flavor. All, however, are geared to the same objective: to provide low-income high school students whose parents have never been to college the kind of academic support systems that “the academic elite” of any high school would enjoy.

“The goal of Upward Bound programs is placement in college,” said Carlos Chavez, Upward Bound program director at Occidental College.

Ninety-five percent of Upward Bound students reach that goal, according to Chavez. Although no formal studies have been conducted recently to track Upward Bound students, they usually earn B averages.

Upward Bound was founded in 1965 because of the civil rights movement, at about the same time as the Educational Opportunity Programs for minority students, Chavez said. But the Northridge program wasn’t begun until 1979.

The programs are financed by independent contracts with the federal government, according to Chavez. The CSUN program has an annual budget of $200,000.

Of the students who join the program at Northridge, 95% stay with it until they graduate from high school, according to Gordon Recht, acting program director for most of the past year. (The acting director now, Renee Mendez-Vasquez, returned recently after a year on maternity leave.)

Of those who stay, almost all go on to college.

Actual numbers, however, are small compared to the population of students in the San Fernando Valley, the area served by the Northridge program.

“There are thousands of students out there,” Recht said. “And so many of them could benefit from this program.”

As it is, the program is limited to just 15 students from each of five high schools--Sylmar, Kennedy, Canoga Park, San Fernando and Monroe. These are schools where high concentrations of minority students have led to high dropout rates. A 1985 report from the California Post-Secondary Education Commission showed that while the overall dropout rate in California high schools for that year was 24%, black and Latino students dropped out at a rate of 33%.

Furthermore, the commission said, “it is evident that far fewer black and Hispanic students enroll in college preparatory courses in California high schools than do white or Asian students.”

In San Fernando, a largely Latino community, a 1983 United Way profile showed that 72% of the adult population never graduated from high school, and fewer than 6% had earned a college degree.

Spots in Demand

Fifteen students drawn from grades 10 through 12 in a high school of 2,000 students is not a large number, and demand for places generally far outstrips the supply, said Recht.

This means that prospective Upward Bound students must undergo extensive screening to gain admission to the program.

The two criteria for admission--either low income or first generation to enter college--are generally strictly enforced. The income requirement is based on a sliding scale. Mendez-Vasquez said that, in exceptional cases, the program director has the authority to waive the requirements.

Students are recommended for the program by teachers and screened by high school counselors.

“It’s a real subtle thing we’re looking for,” said Steve Kleinberg, counselor at Monroe High School. Grades are never a factor. They may be low, as in Contreras’ case, or high like Wellington’s. But there must be “something that shows potential,” Kleinberg said. The choice is difficult and subjective, he said.

Having been recommended by the high school, the students meet with Upward Bound outreach counselors--university students hired by the program. Here, in a two-way interview, they learn more about the program while the counselors learn more about them.

Those who survive the first screening must write a full autobiography and explain why they want to join the program. They are interviewed again by the Upward Bound staff, given diagnostic tests to see exactly where their academic strengths and weaknesses lie--and then interviewed once more.

“We have to know where a student’s mind is at,” said Mendez-Vasquez.

The student’s motivation is an important element in making the final selection of students, both Recht and Mendez-Vasquez agree.

One result of the scarcity of spots is that students become, to a degree, self-policing.

“We tell the students straight out,” Recht said. “If they don’t want to pull their weight, they are free to leave at any time. It’s their loss. No one else’s.”

Once admitted, students join a program that has two essential and very different parts to it.

First is summer school, a six-week residential program held on the university campus. In six weeks students must work to master an entire year’s course in mathematics or science, plus a semester course in English.

Classes finish each day at 3 p.m., but there is study hall every evening for homework. Often, students say, schoolwork dominates the day from the moment classes begin at 8 a.m. until it’s time for lights out in the dorms at 11 p.m.

Friendships Forged

The hard work, the isolation from family and friends, and the strict discipline create a pressure-cooker atmosphere. But it is during this intense summer school program that most of the Upward Bound students form friendships with one another.

These ties will provide the students with what Chavez describes as the “psychological validation and empowerment” necessary for change.

“We became like family,” said Linda Picenl, 17, a Sylmar High School senior who plans to study engineering.

“It was hard. But it was fun, too,” said Felix Cruz, 17, another Sylmar senior who plans to become a high school Spanish teacher. “And it was really sad to say goodby at the end.”

Even Contreras, who once routinely ditched high school, and who complained that the discipline of the summer school program was “too strict,” felt a sense of loss when it ended.

“When it was over,” Contreras said, “there was nothing left to do except wait for school to start.”

In the fall, the second part of the Upward Bound program begins. Progress started at summer school is continued. In a weekly schedule of Upward Bound workshops and tutorials, students keep abreast of homework and take part in SAT workshops, visit college campuses and learn things such as time management and study techniques.

Linda Picenl’s sister, Gloria, who graduated this year from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, is an example of the program’s success. An administrative assistant in the surgery division at UCLA hospital, Picenl joined Upward Bound in 1979 and stayed with it until she graduated from high school in 1981.

“It made a real big difference,” Gloria Picenl said.