AVID Makes C Students College-Grade Material

It is nothing new for Newport Harbor High School graduates to go to college. The school is renowned for its academic achievements, offers an array of college preparatory courses and is home to cutting-edge programs for the academically gifted.

But in the past year, the school has been focusing on students for whom attending college has been more of a dream than a goal.

Newport Harbor’s AVID program is aimed at students in the middle ground of education--those neither excelling nor failing. It hopes to bring 120 such students into the college-oriented culture of the larger school population.

Based in San Diego and developed by a teacher 18 years ago, Achievement Via Individual Determination has become one of the most popular methods in the county and state for reaching bright students whose average grades and unfamiliarity with applications and standardized tests often keep them from attending college.

AVID boasts a 93% success rate of students finishing high school and going on to a four-year college and last February was hailed by President Clinton as a national model for his High Hopes for College program.

“Most of the students come from families where college is not a tradition, so they don’t even have that in their thinking,” said Sally Arellanas, county coordinator for AVID.

“If they think about college, they really don’t know what it means to go, so they don’t do the things they need to do from an early age--like taking those most difficult classes and getting those A’s and Bs.”

But the program has a built-in success factor: It only works with capable students who are motivated to succeed. Students who are not enthusiastic about going to college and who don’t want to stick to its work requirements generally are not accepted into AVID programs.

Schools choose the program voluntarily, and participation by students is optional. About 530 schools in California have adopted the program, including all of the middle and high schools in San Diego and 26 schools in Orange County.

Although voluntary, AVID requires serious commitment from schools, students and parents. Schools pay about $10,000 for teacher training in the program’s first year.

AVID students, who generally make low Bs and high Cs before entering the program, promise to take challenging courses; by their junior year, they must be doing at least two hours of homework nightly. Students turn in notebooks for inspection weekly and attend regular tutorial sessions led by college students.

Parents promise to check their children’s homework every night for four years and are asked to attend college application workshops.

Also key to the program is providing students with information about scholarships and grants.

In Newport Harbor’s freshman AVID class Wednesday, most students said that until AVID, they believed college was economically out of reach for them.

“If I didn’t know there were so many different ways to pay off college, I wouldn’t even think about it,” said Kristen Bishop, 14. “I would’ve graduated from high school, got a job and maybe four years later I’d go to OCC [Orange Coast College] and get a degree.”

“My mom has four kids and there’s just no way to put each of us through college and pay tuition,” added Twyla Odume, also 14.

Their money worries addressed head-on, the students say they are free to focus on the academic aspects of AVID. Believing that they are intelligent enough to succeed is one of the immediate hurdles they face, many students said.

“Sometimes I look at myself and I think I’m dumb--even though I make good grades. AVID reminds you not to quit,” said Luis Perez, 15. Other students nodded.

Principal Bob Boies says he already sees the difference AVID is making in its students and in the larger school culture.

“The real results will be seen when they’re seniors, but already teachers are saying that you can recognize AVID students--they’re prepared for class and ready to take notes and go to work.”

Newport Harbor is doing a wonderful job, Arellanas said.

“They’ve got dedicated teachers, they’re really taking the time to do the program well and they have the potential of having one of the outstanding programs in the county.”

Part of the success is in making the students want it. In the sophomore AVID class at Newport Harbor on Wednesday, teacher Scott Morlan told the class what it was like for him to attend UCI 30 years ago. He calls it the Gospel According to Morlan: College is fun.

“There’s this magic to that time that I try to impart,” he said.

The county’s oldest AVID program is at Loara High School in Anaheim.

“This has been the best-kept secret in Orange County,” said Sue Balas, AVID teacher at Loara. The school’s 8-year-old AVID program has been singled out by the national program as a model for other schools and is one of seven AVID sites in the world that has met the program’s criteria to become “certified with distinction.” That includes AVID students who are taking AP classes, and a certain percentage qualifying for four-year colleges.

“I think a lot of my students have just, for one reason or another, gotten a slow start,” Balas said.

“They need somebody to believe in them, so what I do is I go to the junior high schools and pull them out of class and I tell them they are smart. They look at me like ‘What?’ And I say, ‘Yes, you are smart. Do you want to go off to a four-year college?’ Most of them say ‘Yeah!’ ”

Julio Perez, a Loara graduate and junior at UCI, was one such student.

A member of the first graduating AVID class at the high school, Perez grew up in the Jeffrey-Lynne area of Anaheim--an impoverished area called Tijuanita by its residents. Just staying away from gangs and making ends meet required daily effort. College seemed almost unthinkable.

“My parents are immigrants--my father has an elementary education,” Perez said. Since he was a little boy, it has been his responsibility to translate for his family, write out bills and help them negotiate the American bureaucracy.

When Balas visited him at junior high school and asked if he wanted to go to college, it was the first time anyone had ever spoken of his dream out loud. Special classes taught him the tools of being a good student: how to take notes, how to study for tests.

By the time he was a senior, Perez, now 20, was accepted to UC Berkeley and Cal State Fullerton in addition to UCI. He turned down Berkeley to remain close to home.

He returns to Loara with other UCI students twice a week to tutor the freshmen AVID class.

Separating into smaller groups, the college students helped solve algebra problems and decode Spanish grammar, among other tasks.

“This program has given me so much that I will always feel it is my responsibility to give back,” Perez said. “Especially to be a role model for my family and my community to help them see what they can achieve.”