rigor with support: LESSONS FROM AVID.

When students who are overlooked as having college potential are supported with the academic and social skills they need, their lives can change dramatically.

Last June our AVID students described their personal journeys to college. Each had overcome barriers and setbacks many would find daunting: discouragingly low expectations held for them as members of underrepresented minorities, poverty, lack of peer support, difficult family situations. Each had beaten the odds.

As we listened to Precious Jackson, Binh Nguyen and Rudy Molina, we thought about the concept of "perceived confidence" and the impact that AVID had in these students' lives.

Educator Alfie Kohn discusses the impact of failure on a student's mindset and the effect of failure on a student's ability to rebound. "For students to do serious thinking, they have to feel confident in their ability to make sense of problematic situations." The source of that "perceived confidence comes from success experiences" (Kohn, 1999).

As we listened intently to these students' stories, we contemplated Kohn's point: "Research suggests that kids who fail at something are less likely to succeed the next time -- even if they're perfectly capable of completing the second task."

As the AVID students spoke with confidence about their education and career plans, we noted the "perceived confidence" they each exhibited because they had the benefit of experiencing support from AVID teachers, tutors and mentors during their high school years.

AVID -- Advancement Via Individual Determination -- was founded on a philosophy of access to rigor with support and hard work. AVID pedagogy emphasizes methodologies that empower students to take responsibility for their own learning. AVID coaches students to develop the academic and interpersonal skills that allow them to take rigorous college prep courses. By developing their "perceived confidence" through their involvement in AVID, students' lives are changed dramatically by new opportunities available to them.

Recognizing in the 1980s that "rigor without support is a prescription for failure and that support without rigor is a tragic waste of potential" (Swanson, 1986), AVID developed a set of "essentials" founded on a philosophy researchers describe as "effort creates ability" (Resnick, 1987).

AVID's pedagogy is based on intensive writing, inquiry and collaboration, which some researchers now attribute as "the `new' pedagogy: interesting, hands-on projects; students working cooperatively to solve problems; intense debates where students analyze historical episodes to clarify their reasoning; creative writing that uses literature to illuminate personal experience" (Newmann, 1992).

AVID has been implementing these writing, inquiry and collaboration methodologies as part of its "Essentials" since 1980. AVID data illustrate the success of its students, originally 30 in one classroom at one high school in San Diego and now more than 40,000 middle and high school students in more than 600 schools in California. Over 20 years an amazing record of students' success has been documented. Between 1990 and 1997, 92.8 percent of AVID graduates enrolled in universities, a rate 75 percent higher than the overall student population nationwide. Two years later 89 percent of them were still enrolled (Mehan, 1996).

AVID has grown because it engages students who are often overlooked as having college potential, develops the academic and social skills that empower them to access the most rigorous curriculum at their schools, and supports them in that acquisition. AVID involves parents and brings them into the school community through the AVID "family."

Students and families work with the AVID site team to keep students enrolled in college prep, Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate level classes, and to practice the AVID strategies that develop and hone students' writing and math performances.

AVID students are coached to acquire new skills. When they pick up a book, they're thinking about what they're reading, not about how well they're reading it. They learn to process information more deeply, review things they didn't understand the first time, and make connections between what they're doing now and what they learned earlier.

The AVID essentials

AVID's longitudinal data highlight the success of middle level and high school students who engage in an AVID program that implements the 11 AVID essentials (Guthrie & Guthrie, 1999). The following elements and their rationales are essential to success and their effective implementation is a condition for the use of the AVID name, trademark and logo:

1. AVID student selection must focus on students in the middle (2.0 to 3.5 G.P.A. as one indicator) with academic potential, who would benefit from AVID support to improve their academic record and begin college preparation. By being placed in rigorous courses alongside high-achieving students and provided with support from the AVID class, these students make significant gains in their academic achievement. Additional AVID selection criteria identifies students who are low-income students of any ethnicity, who will be the first in their family to attend college, who face special circumstances that may be obstacles to achievement, or who are of an ethnicity traditionally underrepresented in four-year colleges.

2. AVID program participants -- both students and staff -- must choose to participate. Students need to make the initial choice to participate. Such a choice paves the way for understanding that education is a free decision; without this understanding, students cannot become independent learners. Similarly, teachers are not coerced into teaching the AVID elective, being on the site team, or serving as the AVID coordinator. Parent inclusion efforts are constant.

3. The school must be committed to full implementation of the AVID program, with the AVID academic elective class available within the regular school day. The AVID class must be viewed as an essential part of the AVID student's academic success. Students and staff need to understand that the skills and curriculum AVID has to offer are not frills but are the solid "nutrients" of the college success "diet."

A primary rationale for creating AVID was to give students a new support network. Students meet regularly as a group so they identify with one another and view themselves as a team. AVID is meant to become a community, and the continuity of regular meetings encourages the formation of a support group. Students have constant, regulated interaction with the coordinator/teacher and the tutors so those students can have constant immersion in the AVID values and techniques.

4. AVID high school students are enrolled in a rigorous course of study that meets requirements for university enrollment. Middle-level students take courses (including algebra or equivalent) that enable them to begin a college prep course sequence when they enter high school. The goal for AVID students is four-year college enrollment. The AVID coordinator/teacher works with the counselor and with the AVID student to prepare a long-term educational plan to meet this goal.

5. A strong, relevant writing curriculum provides a basis for instruction in the AVID academic elective class. Students receive instruction in writing-to-learn strategies, the writing process and timed writing. Several writing strategies are used, including Cornell note-taking, learning logs, letter writing and essays.

6. Inquiry is used as a basis for instruction in the AVID classroom. Students develop and practice critical thinking skills and learn how to develop questions for their Cornell notes and for tutorial groups. Questioning at higher cognitive levels is used by students and tutors in tutorial groups and by the AVID coordinator/teacher as a basis of instruction.

7. Collaboration is a basis for instruction in the AVID classroom. Through teacher or tutor-guided practice, students learn to quickly and efficiently organize themselves into working and/or tutorial groups, to interact effectively and respectfully, and to take responsibility for their own and for one another's success in learning. They learn to value the power of their collective minds to identify and solve problems, share ideas and prepare for tests.

They are taught to debrief their group efforts in learning logs, articulating both what they have learned and what they hope to do more effectively the next time they work together.

8. Tutors (college and university students) are available in the AVID class to facilitate student access to rigorous curriculum and are trained to implement the AVID methodologies. Tutors use writing, inquiry and collaboration to clarify subject matter in academic courses and to facilitate students' growth as independent learners. Tutors not only need to be people whom the students respect, but also people with whom they can identify. The college students are powerful role models who promote the development of an academic identity among AVID students.

9. AVID program implementation and student progress must be monitored through the AVID Data System and results must be analyzed to ensure success. All student performance data available to the school is analyzed to establish baseline data for the AVID elective and schoolwide programs. Evidence of success and data provide the mechanisms for continued improvement. The AVID Data System helps sites monitor their own progress and their progress in relation to other AVID sites. Additional evaluation tools are used for ongoing program evaluation and action planning as needed.

10. The school or district must identify resources for program costs, implement AVID Program Implementation Essentials, participate in AVID certification and commit to ongoing participation in AVID staff development.

AVID is most successful when a site team, which also includes an administrator, counselor and core subject area teachers, attends the AVID Summer Institute and agrees to support AVID's goals and "essentials." The Summer Institute, a full week of intensive staff development, prepares the coordinator/teacher for the role and focuses on program components and their application in the AVID class. Ongoing staff development during the school year, such as coordinators' workshops, methodology training and site team conferences, occurs as a follow-up. In addition, the school must allocate resources for program costs, including tutors, materials and staff development.

11. An active, interdisciplinary site team collaborates on issues of student access to and success in rigorous college preparatory courses. This leadership group fosters the development of a schoolwide learning community, collaborates to achieve the mission of AVID and focuses on the achievement of all its students.

The AVID effect

In his 1999 back-to-school address, San Diego COE Superintendent Rudy Castruita said that AVID is the one secondary school reform effort that "has achieved documented success preparing low-income, disadvantaged students for college." As he pointed out, despite targeting students with B- and C averages, AVID produces a disproportionately large percentage of San Diego County's Asian, African American and Latino UC and CSU first-time freshmen.

He reported: "Although Latino students in AVID accounted for only 8 percent of all Latino high school graduates in San Diego County in 1995-96, Latinos in AVID comprised 29 percent of all Latinos completing the UC/CSU course sequence, 20 percent of all Latinos enrolling as freshmen in the University of California, and a remarkable 42 percent of all Latinos enrolling as freshmen in the California State University."

On a statewide level, AVID high schools outperformed other California high schools in drop-out rate, percentage of students enrolled in a college-preparatory sequence and enrollment of graduates in four-year colleges and universities (CDE, 1992).

Even though AVID enrolls economically and educationally underserved students who have not previously been successful in a college preparatory curriculum, 92.8 percent of AVID graduates between 1990-97 enrolled in college, and 89 percent were still enrolled two years later, a retention rate 50 percent higher than the national average (Mehan, 1996).

Knowing how Kohn and other research informs our work, we are concerned that the current cry for accountability will cause educators to forget that adolescents need support to achieve the standards. "Raising the bar" alone does not imply that students will stretch to reach it. We so strongly believe that "rigor without support is a prescription for failure and that support without rigor is a tragic waste of potential" that we offer AVID's history of practice and statistics as evidence for districts and schools as they prepare their staffs and students to meet the new standards.

About the AVID grads: Precious Jackson is an AVID graduate from Lincoln High School, Class of 2000, now enrolled in Howard University in Washington, D.C. Binh Nguyen is an AVID graduate from Mission Bay High School, Class of 2000, now enrolled in Hobart College in New York. Rudy Molina is an AVID graduate, Class of 1995, from Mountain View High School, and a 1999graduate of the University of Arizona, now embarking on a masters in education program at U of A.

References

Guthrie, Larry F. and Grace P. Guthrie. (1999). "1998 Evaluation of Statewide AVID Expansion, Final Report." Center for Research, Evaluation and Training in Education. Burlingame, CA: CREATE.

Kohn, Alfie. (1999). The Schools Our Children Deserve. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Mehan, Hugh et al. (1996). Constructing School Success. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Newmann, Fred M. (1992). "Conclusion." In Student Engagement and Achievement in American Secondary Schools. New York: Teachers College Press.

Resnick, Lauren B. (1987). Education and Learning to Think. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Swanson, Mary Catherine. (1986). Implementing and Managing the AVID Program. CA.: AVID Center Curriculum.

Mary Catherine Swanson is AVID's founder and executive director. Michele Marcus is California AVID director of staff development. Julie Elliott is California AVID associate state director.