The flagship program in NCCEP’s Youth Services programming is the Youth Leadership Summit. In an effort to include student perspectives and the opinions of young people, NCCEP created national opportunities for youth to participate in the NCCEP/GEAR UP Annual Conference. More than 200 GEAR UP high school students have participated in the Youth Leadership Summit since the inception of the program in 2003. NCCEP has been partnering with GEAR UP for Excellence to present the Summit since 2005.
Blending leadership development with the experience of participating in a professional conference, the Summit teaches participants how to be advocates for their schools and communities, empowering them to become the voice for their peers. Youth leaders, known as GEAR UP Scholars, work together to compile a Summit report focused on what educators should consider as they design strategies and programs for increasing student achievement.
The culmination of the Summit, and the highlight of the NCCEP/GEAR UP Annual Conference, is the presentation of the report to the conference attendees. For a half an hour, the Scholars are given the stage to voice their opinions and share their ideas. Conference attendees frequently comment that the Summit report brings a fresh and energized perspective that reminds them why they became engaged in the education arena.
As many of you who follow this blog know, California GEAR UP works with Valley High School in Sacramento, CA in a unique collaboration that provides the school with innovative resources and support services for students, families, teachers, counselors and administrators to create a community-wide college-going culture.
This year Valley High was excited to announce the remarkable achievement on the statewide API. The API reports include a “similar schools rank.” This information shows where a school ranks on a scale of 1–10, compared with 100 other schools with similar demographic characteristics. California public schools serve students with many different backgrounds and needs. As a result, schools face different educational challenges. The similar schools ranks for 2010 allow schools to look at their academic performance compared to other schools with some of the same opportunities and challenges.
Here are some of Valley’s newsworthy accomplishments:
Valley is the Number 1 (non charter) in Similar Schools and demographics in California.
Of 100 Similar Schools in California, Valley scored a perfect 10. They are the only non-charter to do so!
Valley had the highest API score of any non-charter school and had the 8th highest API overall.
The VHS increases are very impressive even compared to the new schools (Monterey Trails, Pleasant Grove and Franklin) which includes more affluent students who moved to these schools from the Valley area. Valley is one of the oldest schools in EGUSD and it compares very well indeed! GEAR UP has much to be proud of in providing academic support.
These accomplishments come along with more great Valley news: a 24 point increase in API since last year!
Special thanks to principal Keven MacDonald and the Valley High School staff for making these achievements possible. Thanks to Chris Wong for the video production!
California GEAR UP Celebrates 10 Years of creating college-going culture across the state of California. Our partner organization, National Council for Community and Education Partnerships, produced a great video highlighting the success of the last 10 years and laying out GEAR UP plan for the future.
A million thanks to Chistopher Wong at Valley High School in Sacramento for this great video of our amazing event on September 18, 2009. If you are having trouble viewing the video, please follow the link.
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