<i>60 Minutes II</i>: Making The Grade

President Bush has signed what is the biggest change in our schools in decades. Standards will be higher and children will face mandatory testing. How can schools push students ahead when so many are in remedial classes, stuck on a path that is not leading to college?

A fresh idea in education may be the answer. It's called AVID and is designed to change the way public schools teach. It works so well, it has spread to 1,200 schools in 21 states. Scott Pelley reports.

"Too often you see a kid sitting in the back row, he's down there like this, first impression from a teacher, he's a knucklehead," says Wayne Dickey, an AVID teacher in San Antonio. "He's not gonna be able to do anything. So we teach them, you know, sit up. Don't go to that back row. Look the teacher in the eye."

Dickey is the AVID teacher at Sam Houston High and for his students, AVID is a last chance at college. They're kids in the middle, making C's and D's - kids like Luci Allen, who is struggling and working nights, because, as a senior in high school, she's a mother.

She says she didn't have confidence, and was skipping class a lot.

"A lot of these kids have been told all their life that they can't do this, they can't do that. And you know if you're told something constantly even though you might have a great will power, staying power, eventually you're gonna believe that," says Dickey.

AVID changes that belief by changing the way kids are taught in public school. First, AVID transfers students out of remedial classes and into advanced courses like chemistry and calculus. Then AVID meets one hour every day and its largely about tutoring - if a student has trouble in any subject, he gets help, from Dickey, from college students trained as tutors, and from each other.

But even more effective than the tutoring, AVID revolutionizes the way teachers teach in public school. Here's the difference. Dickey's job is to watch over his student's entire day. He monitors how they're doing in algebra, history, English. nd if they have trouble with school work, he finds them help. And if they have trouble with teachers or classmates, he intervenes and always keeps the class on the straight and narrow.

Mary Catherine Swanson started AVID 21 years go in San Diego. She believed then that underprivileged kids were falling behind because no one showed them how to succeed.

"What they need is stability," she says. "They need family, they need somebody to whom they are responsible and that's what the AVID teacher becomes."

Some of those early AVID students are now engineers and executives. Javier Escobedo works on satellite systems. Clarence Fields is an executive at Xerox. He says that other kids in his neighborhood are in prison, or were killed.

AVID's system is now being used with younger children. Some 12- and 13-year-olds learn how to take notes like college students, and how to manage their time.

When AVID arrives at a new school, there are inevitably teachers who think that it's too good be to true. Connie O'Connor actually kicked the AVID pupils out of her advanced placement English class and was forced by the AVID teacher to take them back. Now, she says, they do better work than her other students.

"All they have to do is have somebody pushing them, somebody telling them,'Yeah, you can do it.'" says Dickey.

It is hard work, and not everyone succeeds. In San Antonio, all 23 students in Dickey's senior class graduated. Of those, 18 are now in college.

AVID student Sharlette Bates wanted to drop out after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in her junior year. But Dickey convinced her to stay, and now she's in college. Her parents didn’t graduate from high school.

AVID says 95 percent of its students go on to college - as opposed to 63 percent for all students nationwide. It's a lesson in success that is changing the lives, not only of the students, but a lot of teachers who showed them the way.

"You get to a point where you really you get attached to these kids. And you care about them as people first" says Dickey.

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