Building Coherence through Whole School Reform: The Case of the AVID Elementary Program

Abstract

Educators, researchers, and policy makers concerned about college under-enrollment among underserved groups of students have traditionally focused reform efforts at the high school level. Over the last several decades, however, there has been a growing interest in improving college readiness beginning at the elementary level. Recently, the well-known Achievement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program launched a college readiness program for elementary students (AE). Drawing on in-depth qualitative case study data on six AE schools from four states (Arizona, California, Washington, and Florida) in the U.S., we examine the profound affect that program coherence can have on supporting student learning and socializing elementary students into a college going culture. Over fifty interviews with teachers and school principals reveal the impact of structural and cultural coherence, along with the influence of educators’ actions when they cohere around a focused common goal of supporting students on an academically oriented path. At the same time, this study shows that when students were faced with the absence of reform coherence at the district level, they were unable to access the academic support needed to sustain this trajectory. This study has important implications for reform policy and practice at the school and district level.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Table 1. Semi-structured interview data collection.