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This story resonates with me deeply. I grew up in a lower income, single parent household to a family environment plagued with drug addiction and feelings of ec

This story resonates with me deeply. I grew up in a lower income, single parent household to a family environment plagued with drug addiction and feelings of economic hopelessness. I was on track to drop out by my senior year of high school. My father (who was always in and out of prison) committed suicide my freshman year of high school. I was distraught but blessed. My English teacher at the time noticed what I was going through and got me involved in a program for at-risk kids called AVID [1]. It is because of this organization that I was able to not only graduate from high school but also university and go on to have a successful career in software development. Our society pays a lot of lip service to youth being the future but we don't actually do much to help them succeed. The person you might call a loser or criminal was once a child who had the opportunity to become a shining example of what our society can produce. These children are being lost at some point along the way. Once they become adults we shame them for their life decisions but what are we actually doing to solve the problem? When you say, "hey, 90% of these students are outpacing peers in their district based on academic indicators", I say maybe LeBron is onto something. Let's adopt this approach, scale it and study the results. [1] https://www.avid.org/ https://www.avid.org/

vvpan 7y ago
AVID has information on their website but in your own words could you describe how it helped you? Very curious.
- supernintendo 7y ago
  Great question. I can't speak to AVID's practices today (it's been over 10 years... damn I'm old) but for me it created a much-needed structure. Students within the program could take AVID variants of core classes similar to how they might enroll in Honors or AP. The curriculum favored collaborative exercises like group projects and peer review. The idea was to encourage many of the social and professional tools we often take for granted (collective problem solving, resource management, etc.) to at-risk students. We also had regular one-on-ones with instructors within the program who would track our academic performance and help guide us along the way. Finally, higher education was a major focus of the program and took the form of anything from SAT prep sessions to projects where we would have to research colleges and universities we planned to apply to as part of the assignment.
  - pja 7y ago
    So it’s trying to create for at-risk students some part of the support networks that other students get from their peers or family? Makes sense.
    - Ari_Ugwu 7y ago
      I think it's exactly this. We have something similar in RVA called "Open High School" https://www.rvaschools.net/OHS https://www.rvaschools.net/OHS And apparently it's doing very well and is sought after. What a time to be alive! We have quite a few impressive elementary schools in the city but that often means that affluent people leave for the suburbs for middle/high school. It takes a village.
thatoneuser 7y ago
I grew up similarly. I've seen program after program come into my home town just for the administrators to pack up and leave town 1-2 years in, blaming everyone but themselves. It's very refreshing to see someone who "wants to make the world better" actually doing it rather than paying lip service with the real goal of boosting their ego. Hope this is legit. Tip my hat to LeBron for being a real hero to the underserved.
- wallace_f 7y ago
  Thanks for sharing your stories. It would be nice if such administrators and bureaucrats somehow had some skin in the game. Unfortunately, like you say "paying lip service" looks like it often wins out in America's public schools, and our children and future is what suffers.
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    The people promoting these schools are only out to line their pockets with sweet voucher money by selling ineffective books and teaching materials. The schools are set up to fail from the start because they're just a means to extract profits.
    - dwater 7y ago
      It is a lot more complicated than that. There are some people in the system trying to extract money, but they are mostly associated with Pearson and the like. Most of the administrators, coaches, and other non-teacher employees started off in the education field wanting to improve the lives of children, but found themselves trapped in a system that is built of perverse incentives from top to bottom. It is impossible to change the trajectory of a community in one or two years, but the political powers demand measurable results before the next election. The administrators are trapped: they have risen high enough through the system that they are making more money than they ever could as a teacher, and their personal spending expanded enough so they can't go back without significant personal sacrifice (on top of the sacrifices they already made when choosing to work in education). They realize that goosing test scores isn't good for the students, but they rationalize it by telling themselves that if they can manipulate the test scores enough to get central administration off their back, then they can implement the real changes they want. But nothing short of a meteoric improvement will placate the people high enough in the system to be exposed politically, and everyone in middle management is trapped in a cycle of telling themselves, "We just need to do this distasteful stuff this year, so we can really fix things next year." I was a high school teacher for 9 years, and literally every single year I had an administrator tell me about the plans they had for how they would fix things in the next school year once the test scores improved.
chriselles 7y ago
Thank you for sharing your experience. This looks pretty cool!
gigatexal 7y ago
This is so great! I hope you went back and thanked that English teacher. They don’t get the thanks they deserve most of the time and they sure as hell don’t get the pay they deserve. Teaching is a noble calling and I’m glad someone saw you and took the time to care.
esalman 7y ago
The system is wired to goad students to fall into debt to sustain a decent living standard. I am transferring school from a fairly low-cost city (Albuquerque, NM) to Atlanta. My own issues are not comparable to these kids, but about 60% of my stipend is potentially going into rent, and more than 20% into fees, so I have started to doubt my decision to continue grad school.
- ethbro 7y ago
  If you want to chat about Atlanta academic housing, happy to offer any perspective I can. I had a "wide" spectrum of experience during my time there (for better or worse). Mail {username}.co at gmail.
not-a-duck 7y ago
It seems this small success is indicative of a much larger failure - a failure for the greater educational system to do good to all equally who enter in. The system is rigged.

vvpan 7y ago

AVID has information on their website but in your own words could you describe how it helped you? Very curious.

supernintendo 7y ago
Great question. I can't speak to AVID's practices today (it's been over 10 years... damn I'm old) but for me it created a much-needed structure. Students within the program could take AVID variants of core classes similar to how they might enroll in Honors or AP. The curriculum favored collaborative exercises like group projects and peer review. The idea was to encourage many of the social and professional tools we often take for granted (collective problem solving, resource management, etc.) to at-risk students. We also had regular one-on-ones with instructors within the program who would track our academic performance and help guide us along the way. Finally, higher education was a major focus of the program and took the form of anything from SAT prep sessions to projects where we would have to research colleges and universities we planned to apply to as part of the assignment.
- pja 7y ago
  So it’s trying to create for at-risk students some part of the support networks that other students get from their peers or family? Makes sense.
  - Ari_Ugwu 7y ago
    I think it's exactly this. We have something similar in RVA called "Open High School" https://www.rvaschools.net/OHS https://www.rvaschools.net/OHS And apparently it's doing very well and is sought after. What a time to be alive! We have quite a few impressive elementary schools in the city but that often means that affluent people leave for the suburbs for middle/high school. It takes a village.

thatoneuser 7y ago

I grew up similarly. I've seen program after program come into my home town just for the administrators to pack up and leave town 1-2 years in, blaming everyone but themselves. It's very refreshing to see someone who "wants to make the world better" actually doing it rather than paying lip service with the real goal of boosting their ego. Hope this is legit. Tip my hat to LeBron for being a real hero to the underserved.

wallace_f 7y ago
Thanks for sharing your stories. It would be nice if such administrators and bureaucrats somehow had some skin in the game. Unfortunately, like you say "paying lip service" looks like it often wins out in America's public schools, and our children and future is what suffers.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  The people promoting these schools are only out to line their pockets with sweet voucher money by selling ineffective books and teaching materials. The schools are set up to fail from the start because they're just a means to extract profits.
  - dwater 7y ago
    It is a lot more complicated than that. There are some people in the system trying to extract money, but they are mostly associated with Pearson and the like. Most of the administrators, coaches, and other non-teacher employees started off in the education field wanting to improve the lives of children, but found themselves trapped in a system that is built of perverse incentives from top to bottom. It is impossible to change the trajectory of a community in one or two years, but the political powers demand measurable results before the next election. The administrators are trapped: they have risen high enough through the system that they are making more money than they ever could as a teacher, and their personal spending expanded enough so they can't go back without significant personal sacrifice (on top of the sacrifices they already made when choosing to work in education). They realize that goosing test scores isn't good for the students, but they rationalize it by telling themselves that if they can manipulate the test scores enough to get central administration off their back, then they can implement the real changes they want. But nothing short of a meteoric improvement will placate the people high enough in the system to be exposed politically, and everyone in middle management is trapped in a cycle of telling themselves, "We just need to do this distasteful stuff this year, so we can really fix things next year." I was a high school teacher for 9 years, and literally every single year I had an administrator tell me about the plans they had for how they would fix things in the next school year once the test scores improved.

chriselles 7y ago

Thank you for sharing your experience. This looks pretty cool!

gigatexal 7y ago

This is so great! I hope you went back and thanked that English teacher. They don’t get the thanks they deserve most of the time and they sure as hell don’t get the pay they deserve. Teaching is a noble calling and I’m glad someone saw you and took the time to care.

esalman 7y ago

The system is wired to goad students to fall into debt to sustain a decent living standard. I am transferring school from a fairly low-cost city (Albuquerque, NM) to Atlanta. My own issues are not comparable to these kids, but about 60% of my stipend is potentially going into rent, and more than 20% into fees, so I have started to doubt my decision to continue grad school.

ethbro 7y ago
If you want to chat about Atlanta academic housing, happy to offer any perspective I can. I had a "wide" spectrum of experience during my time there (for better or worse). Mail {username}.co at gmail.

not-a-duck 7y ago

It seems this small success is indicative of a much larger failure - a failure for the greater educational system to do good to all equally who enter in. The system is rigged.