Yielding to pressure from Congress and grant recipients, the U.S. Education Department has agreed to abandon a controversial evaluation of the Upward Bound (UB) college-preparation program. The study, which began last year, was designed to measure whether Upward Bound would have a bigger impact on college-going rates if it were refocused on students at greater risk of not pursuing a higher education. The program helps prepare low-income and first-generation students for college. Critics of the evaluation, which required grantees to enroll twice as many students as normal and then assign half of them to a control group, have charged the department with unethical practice. Citing a longitudinal study by a nonpartisan social-policy-research firm that found that most students who participated in Upward Bound were no more likely to attend college than others, supporters concluded that UB was serving too many high-achieving students, and that the program has lost its focus.