The mission of Project GRAD is to ensure a quality public education for all students in economically disadvantaged communities so that high school and college graduation rates increase.

Project GRAD Houston
1510 Jensen Dr.
Houston, TX 77020
832-325-0325 (main)

Mailing address:
Project GRAD Houston
PO Box 15568
Houston TX 77220-5568

Theory of Change

GRAD believes that all students in high-need, low-income schools can graduate from high school and pursue a college degree if they receive adequate support and access to quality teaching. GRAD represents a school reform system that is comprehensive along several dimensions that differ from other school reform efforts by:

1. Working in feeder patterns to ensure that the maximum number of students receive a consistent set of programming from Pre-K through 12;
2. Establishing a local 501(c) (3) mobilizing community resources and working in close partnership with, but outside of each school district;
3. Working with existing assets in each school to maintain a system that is cost-effective, scalable, and replicable;
4. Serving as the systems integrator for all organizations that work to improve a student’s academic achievement and motivation; 5) Providing central services through the national office, Project GRAD USA.

Project GRAD serves as a steward of the reform, ensuring both continuity and accountability. Directed by civic, business, and education leaders as well as parents, GRAD has become the basis of a lasting constituency for a quality public education and college access. The community-based GRAD organization is critical for maintaining accountability and is responsible for program implementation and identification of local funding, both private and state public resources, to provide a unique localized center for the reform effort.

GRAD works with feeder systems consisting of a high school and all the middle and elementary schools that “feed” students to it and, thus, focuses on changing the academic expectations of whole communities. As originally conceived, GRAD was designed to build a firm academic foundation for students as they move through the educational pipeline.

GRAD’s core instructional model focuses on ensuring implementation of five interdependent and mutually reinforcing components including:

1. Researched-based academic classroom support in mathematics and literacy;
2. Classroom Management and Discipline;
3. Social Services and Parent Involvement;
4. College Access and Scholarship;
5. Fine Arts (offered in the Davis feeder pattern only).

This model was based on the assumption that by the time students reach secondary schools, they would be academically prepared to succeed in a rigorous high school curriculum and reform efforts could shift primarily to college access and social supports. In fact, GRAD has learned that feeder patterns are often “leaky;” for example, many students in GRAD high schools do not attend GRAD elementary and middle schools. As a result, deliberate efforts to ensure academic rigor, including classroom and curricularinterventions, must persist through the 12th grade.