As you know, each GEAR UP grant must submit an Annual Performance Report (APR) to the U.S. Department of Education (ED), showing efforts made towards GEAR UP goals and missions. Despite our best efforts throughout the years, obtaining up-to-date facts and figures on our GEAR UP programs from ED remains a challenge. This is detrimental to our advocacy efforts, as the success of your programs contributes to our conversations on Capitol Hill. In recent years, our advocacy efforts have continued to be critical as GEAR UP fights against the prospect of losing funding from the federal government. For more information see our recent articles on the Administrations FY 2020 Budget and FY 2020 Appropriations Outlook.  

To better speak to the successes of your programs, the data from your APR provides a clear-cut example of why we need GEAR UP in our communities nationwide. Information regarding students served, GEAR UP schools, and educator engagement present the ways in which GEAR UP is changing the educational landscape in your community. As a result, we ask you to complete the NCCEP Advocacy Information Survey each year. Utilizing the information already reported through your APR, we can provide stakeholders and policy makers with up-to-date information about which schools in their districts are being served by GEAR UP, how many students are being affected, and the fantastic success stories that inspire them.  

With the APR due on April 15, we ask that as you complete it, and take 10-15 minutes to copy a few data points over to our NCCEP Advocacy Information Survey. We are only asking for the following data points:  

• Partners  

  • Partner name and organization type  

  • Section III, Question #9, p. 10  

• Student demographics  

  • Race/ethnicity, gender, and students per grade level  

  • Section IV, Question #1, p. 13; Section IV, Question #2, p. 14; and Section IV, Question #8, p. 16, Column G  

• Schools  

  • School name, city, state, NCES code, and "active" status  

  • Section IV, Question #7, p. 15  

• Total, unduplicated number of educators that actively participated in one or more GEAR UP activities

  • Section V, Question #2, p. 19  

• Total, unduplicated number of students with parents, guardians, or other family members that actively participated in one of more GEAR UP activities

  • Section V, Question #3, p. 19 

As you complete the NCCEP Advocacy Information Survey please pay special attention to a few areas where we continuously see errors:  

1. NCES School Codes are 12-digit codes assigned to individual schools. To obtain your school’s NCES code view the 1-pager attached and visit https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/  

2. If no data can be reported for a question (I.e. no students served in grade 6), input a 0 to move forward through the survey.  

3. The APR collects ethnicity and race demographic information in two separate tables. The first table asks you to report the number of students who are of "Hispanic or Latino" origin without additional considerations of race. The second table asks you to report the number of students who can be classified in categories other than "Hispanic or Latino." The survey questions mirror the APR. As such, any students reported being of "Hispanic or Latino" origin in Question #4 should NOT be reported again under Question #5.  

We spend a significant amount of time reaching out to obtain survey responses, when this time could be better spent advocating for the sustained future of GEAR UP. Please take the time to complete the brief survey by April 30. If the original invitation to complete the survey from Survey Gizmo is not in your email inbox or spam folder, or if you have any questions or concerns, please email me.