Author: Kirsten Schmitz

As a leader in a suburban Wisconsin school district, I have shared in the increasingly common experience of fellow suburban school leaders: my student population is growing more diverse. Last school year, nearly one in four of our students were students of color.

While I am proud of our district’s ability to build the programs necessary to support students from all backgrounds, I am also cognizant of the critical importance–and challenge–of doing it well.

Our district has approached this challenge by partnering with AVID, a system that focuses on supporting both teachers and students to build essential learning skills. AVID has also introduced us to a broad national community of educators who are committed to making sure all students have access to both academic and soft skills to be successful.

Over the summer, I had the honor and privilege of addressing part of this community at one of AVID’s Summer Institutes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My take-away from the event was clear: whatever the national dialogue, education is more important than ever.

The challenge of educating each of America’s youth at the highest levels—equipping and empowering every one of them to find and use their voices, make themselves relevant and impactful, and discover their true potential— is a moral imperative. For the sake of our collective future, we must answer this call.

This commitment is critical not only for “those students” who need remedial work, nor just for “those students” who are tagged early in life as honors or AP, but for all students. We know all students can succeed given the appropriate amount of support and encouragement.

On a personal level, AVID has fueled my fire for equity and social justice, reminding me what striving to educate all students really means.  It has equipped me with tools to affect positive change as a lead learner at our school. And it has sharpened my sensibilities about the need for systematic and systemic change so I can help all the young people entrusted to me become the best version of themselves.

Learning involves asking challenging questions and heeding the call of creative thoughts. AVID schoolwide is one of those expansive ideas we have embraced because it centers on providing the best instruction and developing the skills of all students on campus.

The program includes encouragement of inquiry based, student-centered learning to fully engage students in their studies, transferring the responsibility of learning from teacher to student. It also allows for discourse, sharing of ideas and increased confidence in how to express ideas and learn new concepts.

AVID provides a roadmap to help students decode the material presented, whether in lecture, print or digital form, so students deepen their understanding of academic subject matter.

We work to integrate the AVID time-tested strategies referred to as WICOR – Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization and Reading – not just for the underrepresented across the campus, but for all students. And it’s changed the way students approach their learning.

This change in instruction across our campus is perhaps the most obvious and outwardly noticeable evidence of AVID’s impact at our school.  The look, feel, and sound of learning today stand in stark contrast to our instructional methods in the past. Click here to see what an AVID classroom looks like.

AVID’s transformative effect is even more profound than what an observer might perceive.  Beliefs about students, their place in the classroom, their abilities, and their potential are changing as well.  With our ever-evolving mindsets, AVID continues to challenge us to refine or in many cases demolish and completely rebuild entire systems with the intent of better serving and building upon the assets of all our students.

Each student needs—deserves—the skills AVID can help them to build. Skills like coherently communicating their thoughts and ideas in writing and in discourse; asking good, deep questions and identifying complete answers and banding together to accomplish meaningful work. Beyond these skills, students need to know their voices matter and that they, as people, matter.

With skills, drive and self-assurance, our students can change the policies and traditions that hold us back from realizing our potential as a nation. They, together, can make us all better.

If we work to implement AVID with fidelity, passion, and fierce determination in our classrooms, across our campuses and throughout our districts, we can and will raise a generation of students who are ready for college, ready for careers, and more importantly—most importantly—ready to change the world.

Brett Bowers is the principal of Homestead High School, an AVID National Demonstration School in Mequon, Wisconsin.  During his 14-year tenure as a principal, he has helped to launch the AVID College Readiness System in two high schools.  Brett supports AVID’s mission as a summer institute staff developer and curriculum writer, all with a focus on leadership development.

Today, it’s become popular to extol the benefits of equity and to talk about virtually everything a school or district does as an equity activity. But in a world where almost everything is equity, how can we know if our individual efforts are working?

Let’s begin by considering the definition of equity in its broadest sense–often defined in contrast with equality. Whereas equality means that everyone gets the same thing, equity means that everyone gets what they need.

In practical terms, equality might mean that every student has access to high quality curriculum, but equity might mean that every student has access to a high quality curriculum that also matches their experiences and calls upon examples to which they can relate. An equality paradigm isn’t necessarily bad or wrong, but it only gets us part of the way to helping every student realize his or her potential.

Today’s schools are far more diverse than they were fifty years ago in the sense that more students from around the world — and more students who used to go to schools across town — are now learning together in the very same buildings. But schools have also long been places where highly unique individuals come together to learn what they need to pursue academic and life pathways that are a fit with their goals and abilities. We do not expect every second grade student to become a plumber or a computer scientist, so why would we design an education system that narrows their opportunities instead of expanding them as broadly as possible?

In many ways, broadening opportunities is exactly what we’re doing. We’re working to personalize learning and create individualized experiences that resonate with, engage, and excite students. But for some students, we’re too often overlooking critical opportunities to provide them with what they need. In particular, students of color and students from immigrant backgrounds, as well as students with intellectual and emotional challenges, rarely see people like them in key roles in the education system.

Across the United States, people of color compose just four percent of district executives – superintendents and other senior system leaders.  And for women of color, this percentage plummets.

The stark absence of educators and leaders of color and other minority groups sends the message that education is something that is really designed for a mainstream that includes mainly White and middle class people. Not for students who possess great potential but whose demography doesn’t match that of their teachers and leaders. But we need our schools to reflect the demographics of our community so that all students, regardless of background, get the clear and profound message that “people like them” can and do succeed.

While we work to ensure that all students have meaningful and productive learning experiences that help to build a pipeline of future educators, though, we can also do more to help students build the key skills they need to be successful in class beginning immediately. That’s what we at AVID had focused our energy and attention on for the last nearly forty years: helping teachers build the skills to teach student the strategies that can make them better learners.

Adversity visits all of us in different ways. Some students face disadvantages in the form of limited resources, perhaps including few adults to nurture and support them. In many schools, adults want to provide the support students need, but the best ways to do that are not always self-evident. AVID partners with those teachers to provide programming and training on how to help students learn to do things like take effective notes, use those notes to study, and check their own learning. As pedagogy evolves, our programs do, too. We partner with educators in diverse settings across the U.S. to regularly review and update our training so that it matches with all forms of teaching and learning — and with the changing worlds that children experience outside of school.

Whether you adopt AVID or develop the skills to support equity in a different way, we encourage you to attend not just to whether all of your students are getting access to high quality materials and teaching, but to ensure that all of your students are getting what they need.

Dr. Edward Lee Vargas began working with AVID in 2016. Prior to AVID, he was a school administrator in California, New Mexico, Texas and Washington where he received recognitions such as State Superintendent of the Year in California (2006) and Washington (2014). He is known for developing innovative approaches in diverse communities leading to improvement of test scores and graduation rates and increasing family and community engagement.

In 1980, Mary-Catherine Swanson, a high school teacher in southern California, noticed that the students coming into her classroom were different from the ones before them. Not just because the district had recently began busing in students from other neighborhoods who looked different, but because the new students came from dramatically different educational backgrounds. These students – undoubtedly capable of meeting the high expectations set for their peers–hadn’t been key foundational skills. Mary-Catherine decided to create the program that would come to be known as AVID–founded on the belief that if students were willing to work hard, they could be taught the skills needed to be college-ready.

Her focus on improving their writing, time-management, and note-taking led to substantial results—so good, in fact, that she was initially accused of falsifying records to make her students look better!  But when Mary-Catherine was able to replicate these effects year after year, her effort began to garner local–and then national–attention. Today, AVID is offered in over 6,000 schools serving 2.0 million students nationwide.

AVID helps educators refine their teaching skills to better provide the foundational instruction to help ALL students succeed in school and beyond. As a non-profit organization, we continue to work with district leaders, principals, teachers, and researchers to scale innovative methodologies that resonate with today’s students.

We serve diverse populations across the United States, and the impact our approach has had on students is remarkable–especially when considering that the AVID student often comes from a population that is under-represented in college, including students eligible for free and reduced lunch (FRL). We have noticed that in our more suburban districts, which are now serving more diverse populations, AVID has also become a go-to partner.

For instance, increased enrollment of students with diverse backgrounds prompted North Clackamas School District in Oregon to adopt the AVID system as a tool to ensure that students received equitable learning experiences. Since implementing the program, they have seen an increase in the overall graduation rate – closing the gaps between students of color and their white peers. District Superintendent Matt Utterback, the 2017 Superintendent of the Year, sums it up this way – “the AVID programs supported the district in opening doors for all students.”

In 2016, AVID seniors enrolled in college at a rate of 71 percent, higher than the national average of 69 percent. This is especially significant because the AVID students come from below-average socioeconomic circumstances and are often the first in their families to attend college.

As a Superintendent in three different districts, I was able to coach leaders to impact educators who served almost 75,000 students. We often spoke about the importance of equity – how our behavior as adults could influence a child’s perception of themselves. I remembered developing relationships with families within our district who were dealing with unimaginable economic and social struggles.

Through these connections, learned two things: First, most parents, regardless of background, truly want better futures for their kids. Secondly, our teachers, by challenging their students to achieve academically and by supporting them emotionally, could make a huge difference in outcomes.

AVID has made that difference in many cases – when families find themselves without the resources they need, it is a lifeline for future success.

Seeing AVID positively influence thousands of students as a district superintendent was inspirational. So, when I had the opportunity to join AVID as the CEO in 2014, I considered it a privilege.

The millions that have experienced transformation because of their involvement with AVID have been deeply influential in my thinking as a leader–and in the intellectual growth of our organization. When I began to understand the profound ways in which the lives of both students and educators were being changed, I knew that I wanted to contribute, too.

This week you all are in for a treat as we take a deeper dive into equity — and spotlight some of the perspectives of AVID. You’ll hear from one of my colleagues working directly with teachers to create an equitable learning experience, from a former superintendent on equity across a district, from a principal on how AVID and its focus on equity expanded opportunity for all students on his campus, and from a student on how being a part of the AVID program gave her access to her greatest treasure.  #ThisIsAVID

Dr. Sandy Husk joined AVID as the CEO in 2014. Prior to joining she served as superintendent in three school districts, including Salem-Keizer Public Schools School district, Oregon’s second-largest school district. Sandy is responsible for implementing AVID’s strategic imperatives, which include furthering its mission of closing the achievement gap and preparing all students for college.With nearly two decades in education Husk has made it her goal to ensure that all students have access to an equitable education.

I couldn’t resist: what would Secretary of Education LeBron James be like?