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JAMES BANKS | Faculty
James A. Banks delivered the 29th Faculty Lecture, "Democracy, Diversity and Social Justice: Education in a Global Age'"...
CME LECTURE | Audrey Osler
24th CME Symposium, "Citizenship, Multiculturalism and Minority Education in Britain: a Question of Civil Rights or Human Rights?" ...
Center for
Multicultural Education
Achievement Via Individual Determination (AVID)
Increasing the college enrollment rate of ethnic minority students through untracking, explicit socialization into academic culture, and teacher advocacy and mentoring
Dimensions:Equity Pedagogy; Empowering School Culture and Social Structure
Title and Location:
Achievement Via Individual Determination (AVID)
San Diego, California
Contact Information:
Mary Catherine Swanson, Executive Director
AVID Center
5120 Shoreham Pl, #120
San Diego, CA 92122
Phone: (858) 623-2843
Fax: (858) 623-2822
E-mail: webmaster@rims.k12.ca.us
- Abstract
- Program History and Description
- Program Components
- Program Success
- Program Replication
- References
Abstract
Achievement Via Individual Determination (AVID) is an untracking program to motivate and prepare underachieving students from linguistic and ethnic minority groups to perform well in high school and seek a college education. Began in San Diego's Clarement High School in 1980, the program is now implemented in 120 high schools in San Diego County and another 186 throughout California. Low achieving students are placed in college preparatory classes with high achieving students and participate daily in a AVID elective class that emphasizes writing, inquiry, and collaboration. Local college students act as tutors and AVID students collaborate in study teams. Case studies of 248 AVID students (Mehan et al., 1996) found that their college enrollment rates were higher than the local and national rates. Researchers conclude that the academic success of AVID students is the result of institutional practices such as explicit socialization into the implicit academic culture, and teacher advocacy and mentoring to mediate the college entry process.
Program History and Description
AVID is an untracking program designed to increase the college enrollment rates of underrepresented linguistic and ethnic minority students. The program began at San Diego's Claremont High School in 1980. Mary Catherine Swanson, a member of the English department, advocated that the largely poor African American and Latino students who were bussed to the predominately White school under a court-ordered desegregation decree be placed in regular college prepatory classes, with additional support provided in a special elective class. The San Diego School Board mandated the adoption of the AVID program in every high school in the spring semester of 1987. By 1993 AVID was implemented in 120 high schools in San Diego County, 186 throughout California, 19 i n Kentucky, and 11 in Department of Defense schools in Germany, Great Britain, and Belgium.
Program Components
Primary Goals
According to Mehan et al. (1996), the primary goal of the AVID program is to "motivate and prepare underachieving students from underrepresented linguistic and ethnic minority groups or low-income students of any ethnicity to perform well in high school a nd to seek a college education" (p. 14). This is accomplished through an "untracking" program that places low-achieving students (largely poor Latino and African American students) in college preparatory classes with high-achieving students (largely midd le income and Anglo). In addition, students participate daily in an AVID elective class.
Instructional Strategies and Materials
The AVID elective class meets daily in participating schools and emphasizes writing, inquiry, and collaboration (WIC).
Writing. A special form of note-taking trains students to jot detailed notes during their academic classes and develop questions based on the notes that are discussed the following day in the AVID class. In addition, students keep "learning logs " and practice "quick writes" to develop their writing skills.
Inquiry. Local college students who operate as tutors in the AVID classroom conduct study groups. Tutors are trained not to give answers but to help the AVID students clarify their thoughts based on the questions they have noted from their acade mic classes.
Collaboration. AVID students collaborate in study teams to achieve instructional goals instead of working in isolation. In addition to using these methods in the daily elective class, AVID promotes the integration of these methodologies into the academic classes that AVID students attend.
Participants
The student population in the eight high schools in the San Diego School District in the Mehan et al. (1996) study ranges from 1,500 to 2,000, and the socioeconomic makeup varies from working class to middle class. Students selected for participation in the AVID program are low-income eighth or ninth graders with average-to-high achievement test scores but low junior high school grades. Of the 248 AVID students in the study, 41% are Latino, 30% are African American, 12% are White, and 17% are Asian American (including 7% Filipino, 6% Indochinese, 3% Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, and 1% Pacific Islander).
Program Success
Student Achievement
Student academic success in the AVID program has been measured by college enrollment rates. Mehan, Hubbard, and Villanueva (1994) compared the college enrollment rates of 248 AVID students who graduated in 1990, 1991, and 1992 to the enrollment rates of three other groups of students: 1) graduates from other San Diego city high schools; 2) a national sample of high school graduates; and 3) students who left the AVID program after one year or less. The results showed that 48% of the AVID students who re mained in the program for at least three years enrolled in four-year colleges, 40% enrolled in two-year or junior colleges, and the remaining 12% said they were working or involved in other activities such as church service, volunteering, or traveling. The AVID four-year college enrollment rate was higher than the local and national rates.
This college enrollment rate proved particularly significant when compared to national enrollment rates by race. Nationally, only 33% of African American high school graduates enroll in four-year colleges, while 55% of the African American students in AVID entered four-year colleges. Only 29% of Latino high school graduates nationally enroll in four-year colleges, while 43% of Latino AVID students enrolled in four-year colleges.
According to Mehan and his colleagues, AVID students stay in college once they enroll: 89% of those who started are in college two years later. However, AVID students who enroll in community colleges are not transferring to four-year colleges.
Program Attributes
Mehan, Hubbard, Lintz, and Villanueva (1994) conclude that the academic success of AVID students is a result of institutional practices such as explicit socialization into the implicit academic culture and teacher advocacy and mentoring to mediate the col lege entry process. Stanton-Salazar, Vasquez, and Mehan (1995), in their review of the program, conclude that AVID students were successful because they gained access to institutionally based cultural knowledge and also established social relationships with those people who were not only technically capable of providing support but who were also committed to doing so. In their words, institutional support is "much more than giving students the fish they need to survive; it is teaching them how to fish, whatever waters they are in" (p. 30).
In addition, Mehan, Hubbard, & Villanueva (1994) found that the following strategies worked to create an academically oriented peer group and positive status for AVID members in the school: 1) isolating group members in special classes; 2) giving stud ents specific instruction in test-taking skills and the college application process (i.e., access to the "hidden curriculum"); 3) providing public markers of group identity (e.g., an AVID room, special notebooks, their own newspaper); 4) creating cooperat ive study groups; and 5) conducting out-of-town college visits.
Many of the students were able to develop dual identities, incorporating academic identities without sacrificing their cultural identities. While acknowledging the importance of academic achievement for occupational success, they expressed a "healthy disrespect for the romantic tenets of achievement ideology" (p. 108) and a critique of racial discrimination. Mehan and his colleagues refer to AVID students' ability to become academically successful without losing their ethnic identity as "accomodation without assimilation" (p. 91).
Program Replication
The AVID program holds yearly summer institutes to disseminate the program. Each participating school sends an interdisciplinary team consisting of the school principal, the head counselor, the AVID coordinator, and instructional leaders from the Engli sh, foreign language, history, science, and mathematics departments. Institute participants learn to use the three AVID methods--writing to learn, inquiry, and collaboration. Each interdisciplinary team is invited to return to the institute in subsequent years to learn how to diffuse the AVID methodologies throughout the school. The summer institute is supplemented by monthly workshops, semiannual site team meetings, and semiannual site visitations by AVID center staff. In 1991 the San Diego AVID Summ er Institute enrolled 720 participants from 68 districts and 169 schools.
Plans for replication include starting AVID programs in other states. In 1993 AVID received a $250,000 grant from the Charles A. Dana Foundation to establish eight schools in San Diego as national demonstration schools.
References
Mehan, H., Villanueva, I., Hubbard, L., & Lintz, A. (1996). Constructing school success: The consequences of untracking low-achieving students. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Mehan, H., Hubbard, L., Lintz, A., & Villanueva, I. (1994). Tracking untracking: The consequences of placing low track students in high track classes. San Diego: National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning.
Mehan, H., Hubbard, L., & Villanueva, I. (1994). Forming academic identities: Accomodation without assimilation among involuntary minorities. Anthropology & Education Quarterly , 25(2), 91-117.
Stanton-Salazar, R. D., Vasquez, O. A., & Mehan, H. (1995). Engineering success through institutional support. San Diego: National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning.
Center for Multicultural Education
