Harlan Advanced Placement & AVID

Ald. Lyle posted this on our FB page wall Thursday night:

A press conference was held today at Harlan High School to announce that CPS was among 4 school systems in the US that were honored for their increase in the number of students of color enrolled in Advance Placement Classes. The event was held at Harlan because it doubled the number of students sitting for the AP exams. Students passing with a 3, 4, or 5 get College credit for their studies. Congrats Harlan!

I went to the recent LSC meeting that night which was where I was alerted via e-mail that she has posted. You can check out this article from CPR. There was mention of AVID that night. In fact it was posted on the marquee out front because well whoever runs AVID was there to evaluate the school.

Turns out Harlan Community Academy is now an AVID (Advancement VIA Individual Determination) "national demonstration" school. An honor that is only held by a selective enrollment military academy in the Chicago Public Schools. So Harlan so far is the only neighborhood urban school to have achieved this honor. At the LSC, they showed a video talking about the AVID program interspersed with both students and faculty discussing the program.

BTW, it seems (although anyone can correct me if I'm wrong) the AVID and the AP classes are related in some way.

Finally I think we need to know about the third Harlan student who went to the White House within the past month, but this time to visit with our First Lady Michell Obama. The link to an article was posted at the school's website. Alas if you read this article, they made no mention of where this young lady went to school.