Cityspan Gear Up is designed for school districts and their partners participating in the federal Gear Up program. The system helps track and evaluate the progress of participating students and captures the involvement of their support network.
Cityspan Gear Up provides a single hub for maintaining all information related to a student's academic achievement.
Register and enroll students
Cityspan Gear Up guides users through the process of registering students. The system collects basic demographics, such as name, address, and emergency contacts, as well as outcome information such as graduation dates and college attendance. Once registered, students may be enrolled in individual services such as tutoring, or group activities such as classes.
Track attendance and progress
Cityspan Gear Up enables users to maintain detailed information on each participant. Using the software, Gear Up program staff can record attendance for all individual and group activities, as well as a five-year academic picture for each student. The system tracks GPAs, exam scores, courses taken and educational progress. Several tools support data collection, including pre-printed attendance forms and options that integrate wireless and PDA technologies. In addition, Cityspan Gear Up can be linked to a school district's student registration system, enabling transfers of student data between systems.
Manage the support network
One of the key elements of Gear Up is the involvement of the program's support network. With Cityspan Gear Up, users can maintain a variety of data related to staff, parents and partner agencies. Staff forms record staff names, addresses, schedules of availability and pre-qualification information. Parents that participate in activities—either individual counseling or group courses—are tracked in the system as well. Partner agencies are categorized by type, e.g. school, service provider or funder, and information such as agency names, addresses, contacts and organizational descriptions is captured.
Create Reports
With Cityspan Gear Up, users can automatically generate Annual Performance Review (APR) reports based on participant and service data. Gear Up programs can also create statistical reports for presentation to funders, evaluators and others. The reports calculate average daily attendance, participation by service category and overall participant demographics. The system also generates enrollment lists, mail labels, contact sheets and attendance forms that facilitate the day-to-day management of services.
Analyze Outcomes
Cityspan Gear Up enables users to generate reports that help them evaluate the effectiveness of different programs and service offerings. The system captures GPAs, test scores and grades directly on a participant record, thus allowing for analyses that relate program elements, such as participation frequency, to student performance. Other features that facilitate outcomes analysis include standardized evaluation forms, user-defined assessment forms and unique fields, such as school ID or social security number, which can link client data to external data sets.