A Reader Asks... Maintaining the Course

A long time LYS’er asks:

SC ,

I am having some struggles getting my new principal on board with a few LYS strategies because they don't jive with AVID, which is her major push. I think AVID is great for college readiness for struggling and disadvantaged students but I do not think it addresses school improvement issues as a whole.

I can report that we have made some significant gains the over the past year, which has come with focused disaggregation and instructional targeting with C-SCOPE and test data. Unfortunately, we did not make enough gains to change our rating. How do I convince my new principal that we are on the right track?

SC Response

I would agree that AVID is not a holistic school improvement program. AVID would fall under the umbrella of instructional delivery / teacher craft. Or the “Art” of instruction. The initial and primary focus of LYS is the infrastructure of instructional machine. And as E. Don Brown constantly reminds us, it the infrastructure isn’t there, the “Art” will not save you.

But the good news is that AVID does focus on improving options for academically fragile students. Meaning that philosophically, LYS and AVID are in the same ballpark. I think that it should be fairly easy to demonstrate that the LYS practice of using the performance data of the AFS to leverage sustained campus is valid and prudent. There is nothing that compares to the clarity of measuring success by those who succeed because of you, not in spite of you.

P.S. Send me your current contact information, I’m often in your neck of the woods and want to stop by and see you in action.

Think. Work. Achieve.

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