Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID)

RIMS AVID

The RIMS AVID team works diligently assisting educators in ensuring the highest academic standards are maintained and that all sites strive towards becoming certified and spread AVID methodologies schoolwide for all students. AVID is designed to increase the college-going rate for traditionally under-represented students and to ensure that the dream of a four-year college degree is open to all students throughout our region. To learn more, visit the RIMS AVID Website.

PURPOSE OF AVID

The purpose of the AVID program is to prepare traditionally underserved students for four-year college eligibility and to restructure the teaching methodologies of an entire school to make college preparatory curricula available to almost all students.

AVID recognizes that the only way students can get into or through college is by perseverance, hard work, and, as the program’s name reveals, “individual determination.” AVID students get no special break—only a chance. AVID provides what first generation college students may lack, what advantaged students receive from their parents and community: high expectations, encouragement, day to day help, a vision of college as attainable, an advocate, and guidance in how to negotiate the system. AVID involves students in a strong group of peers and adults who share a commitment to academic achievement.

Ultimately, AVID provides scaffolding, a social and academic structure to support students as they work to succeed.

AVID targets students of mid-range ability who have the potential to succeed in a rigorous academic program but who would not succeed without support. It is not a remedial program for students who are failing, and it is not for gifted students who are already performing well. It serves the students in the middle, who are capable of success but are not performing up to their potential. AVID is, at heart, a program that equips ordinary students to accomplish extraordinary things.