Ramp-Up to Readiness

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Seven grants totaling $140,000 have been awarded to six Minnesota public middle and secondary schools and one public school district to serve as pilots for Ramp-Up to Readiness, a school-wide college readiness program for secondary students developed and administered by the University of Minnesota College Readiness Consortium.

Grant recipients for 2010-2011 are:

• Dunwoody Academy, Minneapolis
• Forest Lake Area Schools, Forest Lake
• Irondale High School, New Brighton
• Murray Jr. High School, St. Paul
• Olson Middle School, Minneapolis
• Richfield Sr. High School, Richfield
• Twin Cities Academy, St. Paul

In addition, Ellis Middle School in Austin received approval to pilot the Ramp-Up framework. The school plans to seek its own funding through a private foundation.

The $140,000 in grants were made available with private funding from the Bush Foundation.

“The primary goal of the pilot is to increase the number and diversity of Minnesota students who graduate from high school after they’ve achieved the Ramp-Up to Readiness goals,” says Kent Pekel, executive director of the College Readiness Consortium. “Those goals are academic readiness, admissions readiness, career readiness, financial readiness and personal and social readiness. We’ve worked with school systems and other researchers during the past two years to develop the Ramp-Up strategies and tools that these schools will be using during the coming year.”

Through participation in Ramp-Up to Readiness, students complete a research-derived sequence of courses, projects, activities, and experiences designed to prepare them for college success. The program was developed over two years through reviews of published research and national best practices and intensive collaboration with leading junior and senior high schools in Minnesota. The cumulative cost of the research and development behind Ramp-Up to Readiness is about $2 million.

This process has resulted in a program that aims at putting entirely new students on the college prep track, and accelerating the academic momentum of those who are already there.

The University of Minnesota's College Readiness Consortium engages educators, school districts, state education organizations, and the business community to improve student success in the preK-12 system as it exists today.

It also works to change the preK-12 system itself—transitioning it from an Industrial Age model where few students were prepared for postsecondary education to one in which all students are expected and supported to go beyond a high school diploma. Toward that end, the Consortium is working to:

• Align preK-12 and higher education policies and practices through the Minnesota P-20 Education Partnership.
• Help school principals and other leaders create and sustain schools in which every student is on the path to college readiness through the Minnesota Principals Academy executive development program.
• Work with junior and senior high schools to implement Ramp-Up to Readiness, a college readiness program that will guide students through a research-based sequence of courses, projects, activities and experiences that develop the knowledge, skills and habits for success in higher education.
• Create the K12@U Web site and conducting public outreach initiatives that increase the awareness of the importance of postsecondary success and of University resources that can help K-12 schools and students reach that goal.