English Learners

Background

Our strategic focus on English learners (EL) began in June 2006 with a grant from the James Irvine Foundation to work with the Hacienda La Puente School District to provide staff development in AVID strategies for English learners in the content areas. The two-year work with that grant allowed us to shape our current vision of how AVID can best support English learners, especially “long-term” ELs; by refining our curriculum and training for more strategic support of ELs, and by providing another pathway for EL students to enter AVID with more academic language skills and preparation. Since August 2008, we have been piloting the EL Path to College Readiness (ELCR) in the Garden Grove Unified School District with 113 7th grade students.

English Learner Mission

To ensure that English learner students, especially long-term English learners, have full access to AVID and college preparatory coursework.

Work Underway


  • Development of three-year EL initiatives plan, including methods for AVID sites/districts to evaluate their current level of EL achievement, support and AVID access and to determine which of our EL supports best meet their needs
  • Completion of EL Path to College Readiness pilot components (curriculum, staff development, and alignment to ELD standards)
  • Multi-year research and data collection in partnership with CREATE to monitor the EL Path to College Readiness pilot and to track our first two cohorts longitudinally until high school graduation
  • Expansion of EL Path to College Readiness to additional districts
  • Selected EL strategies infused in Write Path materials and training as they are revised
  • Development of EL content area trainings for Summer Institute, Path, and Trainer of Trainers
  • Development of EL support materials and training for AVID elective teachers

Want to learn more?

Our ACCESS Research Journal, Issue 14.1, Winter 2008 features the following articles about English-language learners:

A Personal Charge to Defy the Odds and Close the Achievement Gap
AVID has shown to be effective in supporting academic success for English-language learners. The achievement gap remains far too wide between white students and Latino students. We have asked Dr. Aliber Lozano, Director of Professional Development for AVID, to share his story of growing up in a home where English was a second language.

Understanding and Action: How One School is Helping Latino ELL students through AVID
Valerie Rivas Martínez is a World Language Specialist for the Fresno Unified School District's Curriculum and Professional Development department and long-time AVID staff developer. At Sunnyside High School, a large urban school in Fresno, California, a movement began several years ago to help ELL students through the AVID program. They developed an understanding of some systemic barriers that needed to be overcome in order to provide ELL students access to college.

AVID English Language Learners Project
This article explains the specifics of a grant from the Irvine Foundation. It details how it is being used to engage in an effort to increase the graduation, passage of the high school exit exam, and college going rates among English-language learners who begin high school in Hacienda La Puente School District in the lowest quartile of academic achievement.