Gateway College and Career Academy won the Achieving the Dream’s Program Excellence Award for its success in assisting students reach their academic goals. Each year, Achieving the Dream honors colleges whose commitment to equitable outcomes has driven substantive improvements for students and their communities. The Excellence Award is presented to programs that exceed in four benchmarks: first-term success, one- and two-year persistence rates, and three-year graduation rates. GCCA is an early college public high school that launched in 2004 to support the growing number of students who were disconnected from their education and not on track to obtain a high school diploma.