College Readiness for All: Delivering the Dream
2010 AVID National Conference
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December 9-11, 2010
Gaylord Texan Hotel and Conference Center
Grapevine, TX
2010 National Conference: Call for Proposals
2010 National Conference: Save the Date Flyer
Participants will engage in dialogue, presentations, and sessions from practitioners currently engaged in college-readiness efforts. Hear from superintendents, site administrators, teachers, students, and researchers regarding:
- Access to rigorous curriculum for all
- Strategies to help African American male and English-language learner students navigate their educational path to college
- Strategies for closing the gender gap
- Schoolwide and districtwide tactics for closing the achievement gap and increasing college-readiness
- Parent and community involvement in college-readiness efforts
- Leveraging AVID strategies across the curriculum
Featuring
- Keynote Speakers
- Breakout Sessions
- Panel Discussions
Who Should Attend
- Superintendents
- School Board Members
- Principals
- District Leaders
- AVID Site Team Members
- Teacher Leaders
- Postsecondary Leaders
- AVID and Non-AVID Districts
National Conference Bios
- Mary Catherine Swanson
- David T. Conley
- Gregory M. Darnieder
- Donna Y. Ford
- Trevor Packer
- Bob Poole
- Watson Scott Swail
Keynoter Mary Catherine Swanson was born in Kingsburg, California, in 1944 the daughter of a newspaper publisher and homemaker. She earned a BA degree in English and journalism from San Francisco State University in 1966 and an MA from the University of Redlands in 1974. She taught English and journalism in four different school districts from 1966-1986.
In 1980 in response to federal court ordered bussing in the San Diego Unified School District, she developed AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) at Clairemont High School. Convinced that marginal students can meet almost any challenge if they are given the support they need, AVID became one of the most successful educational reform programs developed in the United States and the only school reform program ever launched and widely disseminated by a public school teacher.
In 1986 she left Clairemont High to join the staff of the San Diego County Office of Education, where under the auspices of state funding she was charged with the responsibility of spreading AVID to every secondary school in the county.
In 1992 she founded the not-for-profit AVID Center and served as its Executive Director until her retirement in 2006.
Swanson and the AVID program have been widely honored over the past couple of decades. Among the awards are features in every edition of Marquis' Who's Who in America since 1990, being cited specifically for her "outstanding achievement in education, thereby contributing significantly to the betterment of contemporary society." In 1995 the California School Boards Foundation presented its Golden Bell Award to AVID "for an innovative, exemplary program which has been replicated in more than 500 schools within the state by educators whose efforts have made a demonstrated difference for students." In 1993, Swanson received the Freedoms Foundation Valley Forge Teachers Medal for Excellence "for designing a program which allows all students to achieve academically and become contributing members of our democratic society..." In 1991 she earned the Charles A. Dana Foundation $50,000 Award for Pioneering Achievement in Education. The Dana Foundation singled out Swanson "for heeding the teacher's calling at the highest level of professional dedication in your development of AVID, an imaginative restructuring of schools that has given thousands of students the skills, support, and guidance that they need to fulfill their potentials..." In 2002, Swanson was awarded the McGraw Prize in Education, the highest award an educator can receive in the United States, and was featured on 60 Minutes II, CNN and in Time Magazine where she was featured as America's Best Teacher. She has delivered numerous university commencement addresses and has received three honorary doctorates.
Swanson has been married to Tom Swanson, a retired bank president, for 40 years. They have one son who teaches Advanced Placement History and AVID at a San Diego high school.
David T. Conley, Ph.D., directs the Center for Educational Policy Research (CEPR). His areas of teaching and research include the high school-to-college transition, standards-based education, systemic school reform, educational governance, and adequacy funding models.
As director of CEPR, he oversees a range of grants and contracts from organizations such as the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, the College Board, and numerous state education departments and local educational agencies. Conley has also developed adequacy-funding models for Oregon, Hawaii, and Washington.
In 2003, Dr. Conley completed a groundbreaking three-year research project to identify the knowledge and skills necessary for college readiness called Standards for Success (funded by the Washington, D.C.-based Association of American Universities and the Pew Charitable Trust). This project analyzed course content at a range of American research universities to develop the "Knowledge and Skills for University Success" standards. In 2005, he published College Knowledge: What It Takes for Students to Succeed and What We Can Do to Get Them Ready, based on this research. He has published in numerous journal articles, technical reports, conference papers, book chapters, and books. His next book, available spring 2010, is entitled College and Career Ready, and summarizes recent research he has conducted on this topic. He also published Who Governs Our Schools? in 2003, which analyzes changes in educational policy and governance structures at the federal, state, and local levels.
Before joining the faculty of the University of Oregon in 1989, he spent a total of 20 years in Colorado and California as a school-level and central office administrator in several districts, an executive in a state education department, and as a teacher in two public, multicultural, alternative schools. He earned his doctorate and master's from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Gregory M. Darnieder began his career as a junior high school teacher. He has a BA in Sociology, a K-8 Teaching Certificate from St. Louis University and a MA in Christian Education from Wheaton College.
From the mid-nineties to the present he has acted as President for The Center for Impact Research and Treasurer of The Albert Pick Jr. Fund. He is also on the Board of the Steans Family Foundation, The Roberta Bachmann Lewis Scholarship Fund, Scholarship Chicago, The Illinois Education Foundation and The North Lawndale College Prep Charter High School.
Greg was executive director of the I Have a Dream Foundation which grew from a single program to twelve throughout the Chicago area. He was the founding executive director of the LaSalle St. Community Youth Creative Learning Experience (CYCLE), which was an after-school and summer youth academic and career exploration program for kindergarten through college-aged students in the Cabrini Green Public Housing Development. As executive director, he created numerous scholarship programs that financially supported over 225 students.
In 1992, he was named executive director for the Chicago Cluster Initiative. He coordinated a multi-agency public/private response to the academic achievement needs of students from four neighborhood high schools. In 1994, he became the executive director of the Steans Family Foundation. He designed and implemented a comprehensive initiative in the North Lawndale community in partnership with numerous community-based organizations. He leveraged governmental, philanthropic and business resources to improve and/or develop educational programs, affordable housing, economic development, health and human services, and youth development and employment goals and oversaw the organizational capacity building strategies of over 50 non-profit agencies.
Greg was responsible for the establishment of the Department of Postsecondary Education and Student Development and for designing and implementing an assortment of postsecondary, academic, financial, and social support programs. He is responsible for enhancing the Chicago Public Schools' infrastructure around postsecondary education and establishing supportive services at every CPS high school. He is also responsible for building university, corporate and civic partnerships to enhance college access. Greg is currently director of the Department of College and Career Preparation with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), a newly formed department that consists of the Department of Postsecondary Education and Student Development and the Department of Education To Careers.
Donna Y. Ford, Ph.D., is Professor of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt in the Special Education department. Donna has been a Professor of Special Education at the Ohio State University, an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Virginia, and a researcher with the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented. She also taught at the University of Kentucky.
Donna earned her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Urban Education (educational psychology) (1991), Masters of Education degree (counseling) (1988), and Bachelor of Arts degree in communications and Spanish (1984) from Cleveland State University.
Professor Ford conducts research primarily in gifted education and multicultural/urban education. Specifically, her work focuses on: (1) recruiting and retaining culturally diverse students in gifted education; (2) multicultural and urban education; (3) minority student achievement and underachievement; and (4) family involvement. She consults with school districts and educational organizations in the areas of gifted education and multicultural/urban education.
Dr. Ford's work has been recognized by various professional organizations: Research Award from the Shannon Center for Advanced Studies; the Early Career Award and the Career Award from The American Educational Research Association; both the Early Scholar Award (1994) and the Distinguished Scholar Award (2008) from The National Association for Gifted Children; and the Esteemed Scholarship Award from The National Association of Black Psychologists. She is the author of Reversing Underachievement Among Gifted Black Students (1996) and co-author of Multicultural Gifted Education (1999), In search of the dream: Designing schools and classrooms that work for high potential students from diverse cultural backgrounds (2004), and Teaching culturally diverse gifted students. Several other books are in progress. Donna has written over 100 articles and book chapters; she has made more than 500 presentations at professional conferences and school districts.
Dr. Ford, is co-founder of the Scholar Identity Institute for Black Males with Dr. Gilman Whiting. Donna has served two terms as board member of the National Association for Gifted Children, and has served on numerous editorial boards, such as Gifted Child Quarterly, Exceptional Children, Journal of Negro Education, and Roeper Review. She also reviews for several journals in such disciplines as urban education, child development, and counseling and development. Professional development includes membership in professional organizations, including the National Association for Gifted Children, Council for Exceptional Children, American Educational Research Association, Association for the Education of Gifted Underachieving Students, Association of Teacher Educators, American Counseling Association, and others.
Dr. Ford was interviewed in the Fall 2007 ACCESS, AVID’s educational research journal. In it, she spoke about African-American male achievement issues.
Trevor Packer is the College Board's vice president, responsible for leadership of the Advanced Placement Program® with overall responsibility for strategic planning and ongoing development and operations of the AP® Program.
Named vice president in 2007, Packer previously served as executive director of the AP Program, where for four years he managed its growth and national expansion and worked to strengthen the program's overall quality and reputation. Most notably, he enacted plans to increase services for small rural schools, double the number of AP courses in world languages and cultures, and align AP curricula and assessments with best practices at colleges and universities.
Before serving as executive director, he was manager of the AP Program's policy and processes, overseeing day-to-day management of the printing, shipping and scoring of the AP Exams and the administration of the AP Exams at 15,000 schools annually.
A former lecturer and instructor in composition and literature at Brigham Young University and John Jay College, Packer has written a manual on composition pedagogy, and written works on author Willa Cather and abolitionist Sojourner Truth. He is currently working on a book examining Virginia Woolf's relationship to the Pre-Raphaelites.
Packer earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in English from Brigham Young University.
Bob Poole was, for many years, the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme Coordinator, at a large and diverse comprehensive public high school in Canada. Starting from small beginnings in 1984, this programme grew to include a large number of students choosing to participate in the IB Diploma Programme. That school became, and remains, one of the larger IB World Schools, globally. Mr. Poole's involvement with the IB grew steadily along with the growth of the programmes in schools in the United States, Canada and around the world. He has served on a wide variety of committees and task forces both for the IB globally and for the Americas region. He has also served as a workshop leader and as a school site visitor. Mr. Poole currently serves as Regional Development Specialist for the IB Americas region, working to increase understanding and recognition of the IB Programmes among universities and governments.
Dr. Watson Scott Swail is the President and Chief Executive Officer of The Educational Policy Institute, a non-profit, non-governmental organization dedicated to policy-based research on educational opportunity for all students. With offices in Virginia Beach, VA, Toronto, Ontario, and Melbourne, Australia, the mission of EPI is to impact the development and implementation of public policy and educational practice through high-level research and analysis. With this information, it is our earnest hope and belief that policymakers, researchers, and practitioners will make prudent decisions to enhance educational opportunities for all students, especially for low-income and other historically under-represented students at the postsecondary level.
Widely respected in the area of college opportunity research, Dr. Swail has published extensively in national journals and publications. Recent publications include "Latino Students and the Educational Pipeline," "The Affordability of Higher Education," and "Higher Education and the New Demographics." He has been published in Phi Delta Kappan, Change, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Dr. Swail serves on a number of national advisory committees, including technical review panels for the major U.S. longitudinal and cross-sectional surveys sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. As well, he has recently conducted projects for the Canada Millennium Scholarship Program related to postsecondary access in Canada.
Prior to establishing EPI, Dr. Swail served as the Founding Director of The Pell Institute and Vice President of the Council for Opportunity in Education in Washington, DC. He previously served as senior policy analyst with SRI International and associate director for policy analysis with the College Board. While with the Board, Dr. Swail co-directed the Trends in College Pricing and Trends in Student Aid reports released in the U.S. each fall. He is a former technology teacher and taught at Victor Wyatt School in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and also at Benjamin Syms Middle School in Hampton, Virginia.
In addition to his research and writing, Dr. Swail teaches educational policy and research at The George Washington University in Washington, DC, where he received his doctorate in educational policy. He earned his Master's of Science from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and Bachelor's of Education from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Dr. Swail serves on the research advisory board of the National Action Council on Minorities in Engineering (NACME) and also on the Board of Directors of the Student Resource Services in St. Louis. Dr. Swail is listed in the 2007-08 Who's Who in American Education, and resides in Virginia Beach, Virginia, with his wife, three growing boys, and Rigby, the Standard Poodle.
Archive: view highlights from last year's conference.