Word: swansons
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...what drives her to be so involved in the Harvard and Cambridge community? According to fellow Winthropian Matt Swanson ‘02, it’s “one part genuine interest, two parts pursuit of fame.” Annie Fernandez ‘03 sees it more as an attention deficit disorder. “She can’t sit still for more than two minutes,” Fernandez relates...
...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...
...Swanson has since brought her program, which she named AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination), 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 (70% of whom were poor enough...
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...
...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 thus demonstrate their commitment), 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...