Krushawnda Thrasher finished sixth grade with a C average. By 7th grade, the Roberts Paideia Academy student had begun getting B's but, she admits, she wasn't motivated.

As the daughter of a single mother who worked in child care, Krushawnda "looked up to" college students but never thought she'd be one.

Until the Cincinnati Scholarship Foundation got involved.

The foundation paid her and two dozen other students in her school $20 to $30 each month if they got A's and B's and kept near-perfect attendance.

The foundation kept track of the students' grades. If they slumped, the students would lose a check or be cut from the program.

"We were all pushing each other to stay in the program," Thrasher says.

The foundation also held workshops on everything from interviewing skills to filling out college applications to etiquette.

Thrasher graduated with a $2,000 scholarship. Now she's a junior studying social work at the College of Mount St. Joseph.

The foundation "gave me that push," she says. "I felt someone was actually there who wanted me to achieve."

The foundation, which has been around since 1918, helps 1,300 college students and 350 high school and junior high students each year.

It targets public school kids whose families are at or below federally designated poverty levels, says President Ned Hertzenberg.

But this year the foundation will help about 100 fewer students, Hertzenberg says. The Greater Cincinnati United Way Community Chest, one of its funding sources, stopped supporting the foundation in June.

Deborah Allsop, director of the United Way's Thriving Children Vision Council, says her agency cut funds because the scholarship foundation didn't have data to prove its programs work.

It needs before-and-after statistics, she says, showing better grades and attendance records - something to show the foundation's effect on high school students.

"They didn't clearly demonstrate how our investment was making a difference for at-risk kids," she says.

The United Way seeks outcome data from all its agencies, she adds.

Coral Baker, one of the foundation's four staff members, says the foundation kicks out kids who don't make A's or B's - about 20 percent - usually in junior high. So it's hard to show big grade improvements by those who remain through high school.

By senior year, all the foundation's kids graduate with the requisite 2.0 grade-point average. Those going to college get scholarships.

Baker agrees with the United Way on one point:

It is hard to say how many of those children might have made it without the help.

Just because you're poor and go to a public school doesn't mean college is impossible, she says.

Cincinnati Public Schools' graduation rate is 60.2 percent. But city schools don't track how many attend college.

Krushawnda Thrasher keeps track of her classmates who received scholarships. All but one are set to graduate from college on time, she says.

E-mail damos@enquirer.com or phone 768-8395