Action Research Project Completed!

Final Count Down....

Well, after changing my state...my district...my school...and my project, I have finally finished and am ready to tell you all about it! 

My new project dealt with increasing Reading Levels of 8th grade students at my current school. I chose 6 students on my team to participate in my my Action Research Project: 2 White Males, 1 White female, 2 Hispanic Males, and 1 African American male. Half of these students were Low Socioeconomic Status. I chose these students to try to represent the demographics of our school.  Our school had over 50% Low SES, as reported by the number of students on Free and Reduced Lunch. We also have a very high number of Caucasian students. 

Each student was assigned 2 non-fiction trade books to read each week and test on in the Renaissance Place Software System (known as AR tests). These books were selected based on the current topics we were studying in Science, Social Studies and Mathematics. The student had to read the book twice and then take the AR test. In order for the book to count, they had to score 80% or better. If they did not, the test was erased and they had to read it with myself or my co-teacher. 

After months of hard work...each student gained an average of a year's growth in their reading level! Yeah! I feel this supports my hypothesis that If students read more non-fiction books than they will increase their reading level because they will increase their academic vocabulary. I will admit that this was not a large enough sample size to consider it statistically significant, but it did help these students improve!

Change in Research Topic -

Well, we moved our family to North Carolina! That being said, I had to change my research topic! I am now going to be studying the affects of increasing the time spent reading non-ficiton tests on student reading levels.

I choose to end this course of study with three of my favorite quotes:

 “A man’s errors are his portals to discovery.”

James Joyce

 I wish all my fellow students luck on their personal portals to discovery. I have had my share and am sure will discover many more as this journey continues. I hope you can see all your mistakes as a chance to learn and help your students to see that their mistakes are the same...a chance to find a new portal of discovery!

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”

Albert Einstein

I hope all my fellow students, friends, family and teachers will continue to seek gaining knowledge, improving your skills, and affecting as much change for our children as time will allow. I am so thankful for parents who taught me to constantly seek to learn all that I can and I hope that I can instill this in my children and students as well!

“Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.”

I think this Chinese proverb sums up what we are doing throughout this Master’s Program. We are becoming involved in an administrative process so that we will truly understand what we need to know to be effective leaders on our future campuses.I hope that you can all become involved in this process and that together we can understand what we need to shape tomorrow!

Finally I leave you with two of my favorite blessings:

If God sends you down a stony path,
may he give you strong shoes.

and my friends

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand. 

I wish you blessings and success! 

Excerpts from a Students Reflections...

...After some thought there was one obvious choice because all year I had been mentoring some of our students who struggle with classroom behavior, as is the case every year since I have started teaching. For some reason, the students I enjoy the most are the ones who other teachers “warn” me about before school starts. I like the challenge and their personality. With this passion being identified, I started looking for a specific area that my campus seemed to have a need in for me to research and affect the most change. In the book, Leading with Passion and Knowledge, I found a topic that seemed to fit with this passion and had big implications for affecting change on our Title I campus. I started with principal Lynette Langford’s wondering: In what ways are out –of-school or in-school-suspensions as a consequence for discipline affecting student performance? (Dana, 2009). I also included working to find an alternative discipline procedure to just placing kids in to In School Suspension (ISS) or Alternative Education Placement (AEP). I had noticed that my students who spent the most time in these placements grades suffered and often had difficulty assimilating back in to the classroom after lengthy “vacations” from the classroom setting.

With the topic determined, I then began to do some background research and found that my observations were well documented trends across the nation. Throughout the United States, researchers have found that low socio economic students from non-white backgrounds are significantly more likely to receive discipline referrals. These referrals often lead to ISS. As students serve more days in ISS or AEP programs, they become disconnected from the school and are much more likely to drop out of school when the opportunity presents itself, which is at the age of 16 in most states. There are many economical consequences of students not completing high school (Jeffrey, 2009). This certainly pertains to my school as we have 64 percent economically disadvantaged students and 80 percent of our students are classified as non-white, based on our 2011 AEIS report. To further illustrate my point, “Alternatives to Suspension” by Joel Rosch and Anne-Marie Iselin (2010), tells us that: “Education research consistently shows that high rates of suspensions are related to a number of negative outcomes for suspended students including elevated rates of school dropout, poor school climate, and low academic achievement.”

Some concerns I do continue to have are with getting teacher buy in, finding time to complete all the tasks necessary to have a successful inquiry, lack of success with finding alternative discipline procedures that will motivate the students to change their behavior, and coming across to other teachers as too “Pollyanna-ish.” In my first course of study, I found that I am an Artisan, which is unusual for a teacher. Most teachers are Guardians who are rule followers and very black and white. As an Artisan, I get board easily and tend to focus on the positive often to the point of annoying other people. I don’t mean to annoy others; I just don’t see the point in focusing on the negative because life is too short to be unhappy. Not that there are not times that I get frustrated, but for the most part, I just choose to focus on the positive and my students respond better to me when I put my energy in to praise rather than punitive means.(Advertising plug for The Nurtured Heart Approach by Howard Glasser) This is one area where I think working with my husband on this inquiry will be a true asset. With his being a Guardian and my being an Artisan, he can help me to see things from other Guardian teachers’ perspectives. I think that we balance each other out quite well and will work effectively together to affect the most change on our joint campus.

To address teacher buy in, Shawn and I are going to facilitate a lot of cooperative groupings with the teachers to get the input and make them as much of this process as possible. I am going to try to get them to accept working with all of the students in the target population, but I am going to give them veto power if there is a student they feel they cannot work with, as this will only be successful with their buy in. I will have to be careful that we keep a large enough sample size to get valid data, while still keeping my teachers comfortable with working with the students we select. We will not actual start the study until next year so that the teachers can come in to the study rested and with their batteries fully charged. I think that a fresh start will be best to give this a better chance of success. This will also allow me to get to know any new teachers to our campus as well. We do not have a large amount of teacher turnover typically, but we do anticipate a couple of teacher retirements this year.

Overall, I feel that I have gained so much knowledge in such a short amount of time. I am anxious to get started on my research inquiry, but feel that it will be more effective to wait to implement it next school year. I will complete the necessary background data before school begins this way I will be ready to go well before the students arrive back to campus! I do appreciate how well prepared the professor and teacher assistant were for this course. I felt much better informed throughout this course than during my last course and was always able to quickly get an answer to any question I could not find an answer to in the thorough documentation they provided us with weekly.

References

Dana, N. (2009). Leading with Passion and Knowledge: The Principal as Action Researcher.

             California: Corwin.

Harris S, Edmonson, S. Combs, J. (2010). Examining What We Do To Improve Our

             Schools: 8 Steps From Analysis to Action. New York: Eye On Education.

Jeffrey, J. (2009). Race, Gender, School Discipline, and Human Capital Effects. Allbusiness.com. Retrieved from http://allbusiness.com/education-training/teaching-teachers-primary/12786638.1.html

Rosch, J. & Iselin, A. (2010). Alternatives to Suspension. Duke.edu. Retrieved from http://www.childandfamilypolicy.duke.edu/pdfs/familyimpact/2010/Alternatives_to_Suspension.pdf

Revised Action Research Inquiry

Goals and objectives/outcomes of the research investigation
Goal 1 – Decrease the Amount of Time At Risk and Low Income Students are removed from class for disciplinary action, including In School Suspension and Alternative Education Placement.
Goal 2 – Find Alternative Disciplinary Consequences to maximize time spent in the classroom by students in Target Population.
Goal 3 – Improve student success in classroom work and on benchmark exams by students in Target Population
Goal 4 – Create a program that encourages Teacher Buy in/Support from 85% of the staff on our campus.

Activities designed to achieve the objectives

Ø  Survey Staff on ideas for need and types of alternative discipline ideas completed in May 2012

Ø  Start of committee to come up with solutions to keeping Target Population kids in the classroom maximum amount of time. (Start in May 2012 –February 2013)

Ø  Disaggregate Data to share with committee to show need for Action Research Plan in this Area (Start February 2012-May 2012)

Ø  Self – Reflection to identify any areas of bias that may affect our results.

Resources and research tools needed for data gathering

Ø  List of At Risk and Economically Disadvantaged Students in 7^th through 10^th Grade

Ø  Quantitative Measures: 6 week Report Cards, Benchmark Scores, and TAKS Scores

Ø  Interview Students in Target Populations with parent permission

Ø  Interview Focus Group of Students not in Target Populations to see how negative student behavior affects their learning in the classroom with parent permission

Ø  Survey Staff and Parents regarding beliefs about school cultures/climate with focus on student behavior and discipline

Draft timeline for completion or implementation of activities

Ø  May 2012 – Select Sample Size of Target Population by disaggregating data of ECD/At Risk Students with multiple Discipline referrals resulting in time spent in ISS or AEP.

Ø  March-May 2012 – Look at data to chart grades throughout year in regards to time spent out of classroom serving disciplinary action in ISS or AEP.

Ø  April-May 2012 – Interview students, Survey staff and parents and form Action Committee to address needs.

Ø  August-December 2012 – Implement Alternative Forms of Discipline with ISS being reserved for severe behavior, as agreed upon by the staff.

Ø  January – February 2013 – Benchmark Data obtained

Ø  February 2013 – Review Data to see if interventions have been successful. Revise Action Plan as necessary or continue if results show progress.

Persons responsible for implementation of the action research plan

Ø  Assigning Discipline – Assistant Principal

Ø  Brainstorming Alternative Discipline – Shawn Adkins, Marquelle Adkins and the Action Committee

Ø  Data Disaggregation – Shawn Adkins and Marquelle Adkins

Process for monitoring the achievement of goals and objectives

Ø  Compare report card grades from previous year

Ø  Compare benchmark scores from previous year.

Ø  Compare number of referrals written to previous year.

Ø  Compare time spent out of classroom to previous year.

Assessment instrument(s) to evaluate the effectiveness of the action research study

Ø  Quantitative – Benchmarks, Report Card Grades, Time Spent in ISS/AEP, and Number of Discipline Referrals

Ø  Qualitative – Teacher survey, Parent Survey, and Student Interviews.

References

Dana, N. (2009). Leading with Passion and Knowledge: The Principal as Action Researcher.

             California: Corwin.