Should we condemn students to mediocrity just to avoid the risk that they will fail a tougher challenge? That’s what American public schools tend to do, argues Mary Catherine Swanson. Afraid of high dropout rates and low standardized test scores, many schools allow all but their top students to muddle through remedial and feel-good classes instead of preparing them for the rigors of college. No wonder so many parents want vouchers to send their kids to private schools. The dangers of such compromises first struck Swanson 21 years ago, when a judge’s order forced Clairemont High School in San Diego, Calif., whose student body was then more than 95% white, to open its doors to 500 minority students. Many of the school’s more affluent families fled, as did several of the most experienced teachers. Clairemont quickly moved to create “special” classes for the new students, the bulk of whom were two or more years behind grade level. Swanson, then 35 and chair of Clairemont’s English department, resisted. She persuaded the principal to put 30 of the incoming freshmen in the school’s most difficult classes, provided they would meet with her for a period a day for tutoring and support. Swanson’s students struggled mightily at first, but four years later, to the astonishment of everyone at Clairemont except herself, all of her 30 students went to college. Swanson has since brought her program, which she named AVID , to more than 1,200 schools across the country. Today it is widely regarded as one of the most effective educational reforms ever created by a classroom teacher. This year more than 65,000 students in 21 states are in AVID, and Swanson, who in 1986 left the classroom to run the program full time, leads a team that trains nearly 9,000 teachers a year. The results have been extraordinary. Since 1980, more than 93% of AVID graduates have gone to college. And 85% of the AVID kids in college were still enrolled two years later, compared with about 70% of all college entrants. Swanson’s philosophy is simple: raise expectations and then give students the support they need to meet them. AVID targets the kids most educational crusaders ignore–the ones in the middle, coasting by with Cs and Ds, whose families don’t expect them to do much beyond high school. Students must choose on their own to enroll , and once they do, they are placed in their school’s most accelerated classes. For one period each day they meet with their AVID instructor, who teaches them, in essence, how to learn–what kind of questions to ask in class, how to put notes into their own words, the best way to underline a textbook. Says Swanson, who hopes to soon hand over AVID’s administration and return to the classroom: “Never underestimate what kids can do. That’s what our schools and teachers need to know.”
