Photograph by Adam Behar

8th grade Standley Middle School AVID students, from left to right: Madison Galeana, Sebastian Nunez, and Logan Preston, with teacher Nikki Botts in the back center.

In 1980, Cameron Crowe was an undercover student at Clairemont High School, situated in one of San Diego’s original planned communities, or suburbs. Five years after the end of the Vietnam war, Crowe was there principally to observe his research subjects, suburban adolescents, for his upcoming novel and movie, Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Photograph by Adam Behar

But that wasn’t the only story percolating on the Clairemont High campus in 1980. The school also gave rise to an education program that would go on to make college accessible to millions of students who’d become the first in their families to graduate from college.

It started with San Diego Unified receiving a federal court order to integrate its schools, which were segregated because of housing patterns — the result of historical redlining to keep out “undesirable elements” from neighborhoods north of Interstate 8. In 1980, Clairemont High School had 2000 students — and just eight were Black or Hispanic, says Mary Catherine Swanson, an English teacher at the school and protagonist of this story. (She quickly disabuses me of the myth that Crowe was undercover. “Everyone knew who he was.”) The district introduced voluntary busing, which essentially meant busing kids from south of the 8 to north of the 8, and specifically, from southeast San Diego to Clairemont High School.

Many teachers had concerns: how would they educate their students without lowering their standards and holding other students back? Swanson saw it as an opportunity. She was no fan of remedial education, which she dismissed as rudimentary worksheets and other items designed to keep students busy — and in many cases, bored. If she could challenge this new cohort of students by raising expectations while providing a ton of academic and personal support (via an elective class), they would rise to the challenge. Philosophically, she believed in un-tracking the students, or moving them from the slow track to the fast track. Her classroom became a laboratory for testing her theory. Her measurement stick? Getting her students accepted to four-year colleges and universities. She called the elective AVID, for Advancement via Individual Determination.

When Swanson, now 80, was designing the AVID elective, “UCSD had the lowest minority enrollment rate and the highest concomitant attrition rate among minority kids,” she says, meaning there weren’t a lot of minority kids at UCSD, and that due to financial burden, they often had to drop out or discontinue their education. “I figured, we’re going to have these kids for four years. If we put them in the right academic classes and we give them tutoring and we work on their life skills, I think we can get them off to UCSD. And I went to the principal and he said to me, ‘I’m retiring at the end of this year. Go ahead and do anything you want to do.’ And that’s what I did.”

Initially, she had to navigate other teachers’ skepticism — getting them to agree to untracking the students would be an obstacle. In retrospect, she’s understanding: “I was now putting kids into advanced classes who were not ready for advanced classes.” Fortunately, there were “a few really good teachers” who agreed and accepted the students into their class. The first year of the AVID elective, Swanson started with 32 students, two of whom dropped out, leaving her a core group of 30 students. Swanson told me that “28 went to a four-year college and two went to community college.” After eight years had passed, they’d all graduated from four-year colleges and universities, every last one of them.

In 1986, Swanson left Clairemont High to create the AVID Center and focus on growing the program. Today, AVID is a mainstay in K-12 education and is offered in most schools throughout San Diego County and in over 8000 schools across 47 states, according to the AVID Center.

English teacher Mary Catherine Swanson designed the AVID program at Clairemont High School in the early 1980s.

I decide I need to see AVID in action, so I go back to my own stomping grounds, Standley Middle School in University City, where I was an average student who could have been helped by a program like AVID. Standley looks pretty much the same as I remember it: windowless buildings that make it look more like a sprawling prison more than an educational institution. But inside the period-one AVID classroom of about 20 students, there is life brimming. The seventh and eighth graders have transformed the classroom wall into a collage of colorful student artwork and college pennants, with the AVID logo across the center. I’m greeted by Nikki Asaro Botts, a cheerful, high-energy teacher who’s been with the program since 2010.

She points out that being smart and curious isn’t enough to guarantee success in school. Knowing how to “do” school and master the unwritten curriculum is a big focus of AVID at the elementary school and middle school level. In middle school, AVID teaches students how to organize their notes and assignments, plan their days and weeks, manage their time, and communicate with teachers. When I visit, the students are working on a time management exercise that they will turn into a podcast. Botts’ other goal is to help students “build a college-going mindset, so they’re familiar with what college is looking for.” For many middle school students, going to college isn’t on their radar. That’s what the college pennants and the field trips to San Diego State University are for.

When Swanson created the program 45 years ago, she realized that its success would depend on her ability to foster a community of students. She explains, “We are a family that sets goals and supports each other. The students form community within the school. They feel they belong.”

In their other classes, students may never see the teacher again after the semester ends. Ideally, the AVID teacher stays with the same groups of kids for three or four years. At Standley, Botts tells me, the AVID students form a community, just like AVID founder Swanson envisioned. “It’s all about creating that family of students who motivate and teach each other and build relationships.” They grow together like a family and are surrounded by people — AVID teachers, tutors, counselors, and their fellow students – who have a stake in their success. And when they transition to high school, they can enroll in AVID to maintain the support and continuity. University City High School, which is less than a mile from Standley, sends AVID students to talk to the middle school AVID students about what to expect from high school and what classes to take.

Not long ago, Botts and her family had a couple of her former students over for spaghetti and meatballs. “A lot of these kids, they just need love and someone who’s got their back and who’s going to push them to be successful, tell them they can do it. I think that’s me.” She notes with a smile that she also “gets frustrated with them when they mess around, or they don’t turn their stuff in like they’re supposed to.” She can be soft but she’s no softie.

Central to the students’ success is the AVID binder. “In sixth grade AVID, I teach the students how to organize their binders,” says Botts. “They have a daily planner, a monthly planner and calendars with all of their assignments and due dates mapped out, when their tests are going to be, when they have meetings.” The binders help keep the students on track, but they’re also for the teachers, who need to know what and how their AVID students are doing in their academic courses. “Before I taught AVID, I was responsible for how a student did in English for one year,” said Botts. “As an AVID teacher, I’m responsible for how they do in every single class they have for four years. And how am I going to have access to all of that? Well, I’ve got to have the notes. I’ve got to know what’s going on in class.”

UCHS/University City High School seniors and AVID students: Caio Rocha, Xionna McCusker, David Berezhnyi

Photograph by Adam Behar

Botts says one of the byproducts of the AVID binder is increased confidence. “When they’re organized, students’ behavior changes and they feel more confident and can function better. They can listen more effectively,” she said.

AVID is an elective course; the students who take the class “choose to be here,” she emphasizes. She introduces me to a few of them. Logan Preston is in 8th grade and has been in AVID since 6th grade. “I just really liked the energy that Ms. Botts had,” he says. “After I took AVID in sixth grade, I wanted to come back, because her strategies helped me come through sixth grade. She has really good motivation and a really good attitude.” Sebastian Nunez had difficulty in sixth grade “because I wasn’t doing so good in my academics.” So, he enrolled in AVID. Sebastian credits Botts with helping him learn how to manage his time, take notes and learn “multiple strategies throughout the years of being in AVID.” He says now he has “the passion to go to college.”

Botts describes herself as a school mom “who always wants to see kids succeed. It’s just an awesome feeling. Some of these kids I’ve had since sixth grade, and I’ve seen them increase their academics and their social behavior.” Curriculum and teaching strategies are important but are not enough — you need a great AVID teacher. That’s why it’s important for schools to select the right person for the job.

AVID student Madison Galeana describes Botts as being an “immediately welcoming teacher” who helped her “look forward into the future and to not give up.” All three students said they’ll continue to take the AVID elective when they graduate to University City High School. Logan wants to go to Penn State or Ohio State, somewhere where there’s a prestigious football program, while Sebastian wants to attend Louisiana State University, at least partly because the Tigers have a good baseball program. For her part, Madison wants to go to UC Davis, which she researched as a younger girl and has always wanted to attend. She tells me that researching colleges is “really fun.”

Providing access to college tutors, ideally former AVID students themselves, is a key feature of the program. Sometimes it can be difficult for schools to find or afford tutors. But that’s not a problem for Botts, who says she is grateful for “the whole slew of tutors” that the school has access to during the week. That’s largely because of a partnership that San Diego Unified School District has with UCSD College Corps, which supplies the tutors. In addition to running tutorials and helping the middle school students academically, the college students serve as role models. AVID students can see themselves in their AVID tutors and make the mental connection that they can also succeed if they challenge themselves and work hard.

Jennifer Roberts Huszar, UCHS/University City High School AVID teacher.

Photograph by Adam Behar

AVID tutor and UCSD undergrad Leia Ninete is a second-year biology student who grew up in Riverside, where throughout high school she was an AVID student. “AVID helped me a lot with getting ready for college and learning about resources that I didn’t know about, helping me with my classes, like applying to college and financial aid, and becoming organized.” Leia says she is “Pre-PA” right now and wants to go to graduate school to become a physician’s assistant.

From Los Angeles, Peter Leonido is, like Leia, a UCSD student and AVID tutor who was himself an AVID student in all four years of high school. He said he’s grateful for the level of support that the AVID program gets at Standley, but that he wishes it were spread more equally to other high schools in San Diego. He’s also a tutor at Crawford High School and notices a difference. “We don’t have teachers that are experienced as Ms. Botts who are teaching the curriculum, and we definitely need that support.”

After college, Peter wants to give back and plans to work in K-12 or in higher education. “Coming from a low-income background, being the first in my family to go to college, I definitely want to help students increase their access to college and chances of being more than what they see for themselves.”

UCHS is my next stop. It’s been 40 years since I graduated from University City High, and the school looks remarkably the same, except the outside perimeter is gated with imposing ten-foot fences and a surrounding wall. I find Jennifer Roberts Huszar’s AVID classroom, where the students are organized into small groups.

If AVID middle school is all about exposing kids to college and getting them motivated and organized, AVID at the high school level is about ensuring students are qualified and prepared for college — what Huszar calls college readiness.

AVID was conceived for kids in the academic middle who would be the first in their family to go to college. However, “that shows up a little differently depending where you are in the country,” says AVID Center CEO Thuan Nguyen. “We’re in some of the lowest income schools in the country, and we’re also in some of the most affluent schools in the country, too.” (Nguyen immigrated to the U.S. as a child refugee from Vietnam.)

“Here at UC High School,” Huszar concedes, “our student population doesn’t include a ton of students whose parents didn’t go to college. We are fairly affluent here, upper middle class.” AVID at UCHS is focused on supporting students who are taking their first AP class, she said, adding that “we’re trying hard to get students to take more AP courses, but it’s hard.” She tries to enroll students who are “moving into advanced studies from sort of the standard track to the more advanced track, and they need that extra support.”

UCHS also has a number of immigrant students who take AVID. David Berezhnyi’s family immigrated from the Ukraine in 2016. He took AVID in middle school and has continued to take AVID in high school. “As a first-generation college-going student, it helps you a lot, he said. “It guides you towards the right direction so you know the steps to take to get into college.” David especially found helpful the group discussions, note-taking, and tutorials where they’d work together as a group. He’s currently taking AP Literature and AP Government. As an immigrant, he knew taking AP government would be challenging but he’s “adjusted to it.” He’s applied to colleges and would like to stay in California, hopefully at SDSU.

Standley Middle School AVID tutors Leia Ninete and Peter Leonido, both UCSD undergrad students.

Photograph by Adam Behar

Caio Rocha’s family moved here from Brazil in 2017. The UC High senior speaks Portuguese and English as a second language; still, he’s challenging himself with AP Literature. “AVID is helping a lot. I can see that my grades have improved,” he said. “Last year I was struggling. I was basically a C student. Now I have mostly As.” He plans to attend Miramar College and study aviation — he comes from a family of pilots — and then transfer to a four-year college.

Huszar notes that the AVID Center had always put an emphasis on students attending four-year colleges and universities. But now, more kids are using the free community college that’s available through the San Diego Community College District; after two years, many will transfer to a four-year college.

Senior Xionna McCusker has been in AVID for four years, since she was a freshman at UC High. “I feel like having regular classes isn’t challenging enough. I feel I would procrastinate more in those classes.” In 2023, she took AP Language and honors history, and this year, AP Government. “My family is all from Mexico, so I know more about the Mexican government than the U.S. government. I went in blindly, not knowing anything, and now, as the first semester comes to an end, I’ve learned a lot about U.S. politics.”

Before AVID, Xionna didn’t see herself going to college. “After high school, I assumed I’d just get a job without even going to college. But AVID widened my options. Being in AVID motivated me and changed how I saw things. I’m a first-generation college student and I really like the idea of being the first in my family to go to college.” Huszar remarks, “I can give them the taste of going to college so they know it’s in their future and that they can do it if they want to do it.”

Sometimes parents of AVID students have mixed feelings about their child’s success. Swanson shared an anecdote from when she was an AVID teacher that illustrates this point. “When the kids got their college acceptance letters, we celebrated and I made pennants and hung them from the ceiling of the classroom,” she said. But then she noticed that she was more excited than some of the students, and she asked for an explanation. “And they said, ‘Well, my parents aren’t really sure they want me to go.’” The parents were concerned not only about the cost of college but also about losing their child’s economic contribution, on which the family depended. “How do I say to a family that’s struggling economically, ‘Your child is not going to be a wage earner for four years, but trust me, at the end of four years, they will make really good money and help you out of the economic situation you’re in now.’” (AVID students typically apply for financial aid through FAFSA, Free Application for Federal Student Aid.)

It’s common these days for educational leaders to espouse a belief in “college for all.” Their point isn’t that all kids must go to college, but that they must have the opportunity, which means taking the right classes to ensure they’re qualified. And yet there’s a counter-narrative that’s being advanced by the likes of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, that kids don’t need to go to college in order to be successful. So, I put the question to AVID founder Mary Catherine Swanson: maybe college isn’t the end all and be all? “I couldn’t disagree more,” she responds. She sees it as an issue of economic competitiveness. “Since the end of World War 2, America has been the leader among nations. The advances we’ve made are the result of being an educated people. Look at India, which has some great universities and is making big advancements. The same thing is true in China. Everybody’s not going to go to college, I recognize that, but we need to push college, because we need to stay competitive worldwide, and without college, we won’t.”

Although AVID’s mission is to get more students into college, increasingly AVID is focused on what happens to their students after college. AVID founder Swanson cites the case of Jesus Medrano, an AVID student (and now a board member of AVID Center) who achieved his academic dream of attending MIT. But after graduating, he felt lost. The way Swanson tells it, the university didn’t help Medrano with “any kind of connections or framework for getting a job,” for transitioning to the next chapter. AVID Center is trying to help close that gap by connecting newly minted college grads, who went through AVID K-12, with successful AVID alumni to help them navigate their post-university lives.

Swanson says, “AVID is so much bigger and offers so much more today” than when she created the first AVID elective at Clairemont High School in 1980. AVID Center has almost 300 full-time employees and trains almost 80,000 teachers a year, including hosting the Summer Institute, which teachers I spoke with regard as the gold standard for teacher training.

Swanson, who was named CNN and Time magazine’s “America’s Best Teacher” in addition to numerous other accolades, says it was never about her. “The credit goes to the students. I was just the right person in the right place at the right time.” Swanson retired from AVID Center in 2006 and remains on the board of directors.

AVID has a motto: “Connections + Organization + Tutorials/Study Groups = Student Success.” At the end of the day, AVID students succeed because they have a common goal they’re working towards, a college-oriented culture into which they’re immersed, a community of AVID teachers, tutors and fellow students to keep them motivated and on schedule, and the individual determination to achieve it all. AVID is, after all, Advancement via Individual Determination. “That means taking personal responsibility and not playing the victim,” Swanson emphasizes. “If we can get that in society at large, can you imagine?”