Wilder Middle School College Readiness Center

About the Program

Category: Children and Youth (Best in Category)

Year: 2014

The College Readiness Center (CRC) is an extended school year program for students from L. Douglas Wilder Middle School. It focuses on cultivating a college-bound mindset in students through academic support, enhanced parental communication, and advising. Program features include: an instructional framework with college-ready standards; college experience field trips; student efficacy and academic skill-building; and college-affordability planning. Students and parents commit to the program through an application process. Students enroll in all advanced classes, and their confidence grows as they achieve at levels equal to or above their peers. A program underpinning is Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID). Teachers are selected and trained for AVID, and their instruction focuses on AVID’s strategies: Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization and Reading, or WICOR. Students also receive tutoring and mentoring through a paid tutoring program with successful college students. In tutoring sessions, CRC students lead their peers with the facilitation of the college tutor. The program accelerates meaningful and motivational learning, maximizes research-based methods of effective instruction and acts as a catalyst for systemic reform and change. The program is completing its first year with more than 80 sixth-graders and is growing with the addition of seventh- and eighth-graders over the next two years.