Project GRAD facing more challenges.(Graduation Really Achieves Dreams)

Byline: Jennifer Radcliffe

May 30--College wasn't even a dream back when Rodolfo Reyes Jr. sold cheese door-to-door in San Luis Potosi, Mexico.

The then-10-year-old -- who had just lost three fingers to a meat grinder -- assumed he would make his living on a small cattle ranch, like his callous-handed father and uncle.

Hundreds of miles away, however, Houston energy executive Jim Ketelsen was building a different vision for Rodolfo and the thousands of other low-income children who land in Houston schools. He founded a nonprofit program called Project GRAD (Graduation Really Achieves Dreams) at Davis High School in 1993 to entice students with $4,000 scholarships to finish high school and enroll in college.

Because their courses collided, Rodolfo was among 700 recent Houston Independent School District graduates headed to college with a GRAD scholarship -- marking the end of a tumultuous school year for the flagship site of what has become a national school reform program.

Project GRAD Houston battled back from near extinction this year after HISD leaders questioned the program's effectiveness and slashed its funding. Parts of the program, which now serves more than 130,000 children in a dozen cities nationally, aren't making the grade, HISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra said.

An October 2004 report -- the only analysis HISD has made public on Project GRAD -- showed that students at five comparable non-Project GRAD high schools had higher passing rates on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge Skills, despite getting less money.

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