Investing in Innovation Fund (i3)
The purpose of the i3 program is to provide competitive grants to applicants with a record of improving student achievement, in order to expand the implementation of, and investment in, innovative practices that are demonstrated to have an impact on student growth for high-need students, closing achievement gaps, decreasing dropout rates, increasing high school graduation rates, or increasing college enrollment and completion rates.
Grants will allow eligible entities to expand and develop innovative practices that can serve as models of best practices; work in partnership with the private sector and the philanthropic community; and identify and document best practices that can be shared and taken to scale based on demonstrated success.
Eligible entities for i3 grants include (1) an LEA, or (2) a nonprofit organization working in collaboration with one or more LEAs or with a consortium of schools.
The AVID College Readiness System is a good fit with a number of the i3 2012 priorities. AVID would be pleased to be a vendor on an LEA's i3 project and offers:
- A 32 year record of closing the achievement gap and significantly improving academic achievement for all students
- A proven data system to measure and document outcomes
- An extensive teacher and student support system - including intensive professional learning for teachers, counselors and administrators
- A system of school-wide reform that often results in the transformation of the academic, college-going culture of a school
- A comprehensive system that once implemented can be sustained without significant ongoing expenditures.
The 2012 competitions have closed and awardees announced. No dates for 2013 have been set.
AVID Center awarded 2012 i3 Development Grant
AVID Central Florida Collaborative:
Improving Student Outcomes in a Rural Context
AVID Center will partner with three rural local education agencies in Florida, their area educational consortium and the local college district to demonstrate the hypothesis that a collaborative of secondary and postsecondary institutions serving a rural area that vertically integrates college readiness best practices, access to rigorous coursework and student support strategies can significantly improve student achievement and success.
Official Partners are the School District of De Soto County, Hardee County Schools, and Highlands County Schools. Other Partners are the Heartland Educational Consortium, a regional, non-profit, educational service agency providing cooperative services to member districts, and South Florida State College, offering dual enrollment, associate degrees and an expanding number of baccalaureate degrees. All three school districts are members of the Heartland Educational Consortium.
Two project strategies will address the challenges of rural students and schools:
Strategy 1: Undertake systematic vertical alignment to increase college readiness across four feeder patterns of middle school, high school and college campus. The project establishes a Vertical Alignment Collaborative bringing together school, district and college leaders, key decision-makers and subject content leaders to explore, define, and implement processes and procedures that leverage limited resources, create communities of practice for educators, align best practices and expectations across grades and levels, and promote economic and relational efficiencies that can result in greater student success.
The project will develop a manual to guide school districts and colleges in implementing this vertical alignment approach. The manual will be designed to enable the Vertical Alignment Collaborative processes and structures developed to be used to implement other learning support structures as well as AVID and will be available in print and online.
Strategy 2: Accelerate implementation of AVID at secondary schools to achieve a schoolwide impact by training a significant number of teachers in the first three years. As more teachers use the AVID instructional methodologies in classes, more students learn WICOR skills and engage in college readiness activities. Students schoolwide are motivated to succeed in the classes of rigor required for college acceptance. The entire school campus is impacted as AVID’s college-going mindset permeates classrooms. South Florida State College instructors will learn and implement AVID methodologies in selected core "gatekeeper" courses that students enroll in during high school (dual enrollment).
The project utilizes the AVID College Readiness System as the foundation for the college readiness best practices, instructional methodologies to increase access to rigorous coursework, student support strategies, and systemic approach to creating college-going cultures on campuses.
The grant term is five years and the i3 award is nearly $3 million. In addition, the AT&T Foundation is partnering with AVID in year one of the grant to provide a private sector match which will fund AVID tutors at the secondary schools and college visits for the students.