Standardized tests describe "what" students should know. AVID strategies teach students "how" to learn and master the skills needed to learn what they should know. The expectations of AVID align with state standards in many ways. For example, the higher-level thinking skills required by STAAR (i.e., analyzing, comparing, inferring) are the exact skills that AVID has promoted and used to design its curriculum for the last 30 years.