Revisions to Action Research Plan

After meeting with my site supervisor, there are several changes that I am making to my Action Research Plan. The first one is my goal. Instead of focusing on geometry concept courses, my focus will be mainly be on Algebra 1 concept courses due to the fact that it has the lowest TAKS scores across the district. If we find that the concept courses overall on our campus are not successful, then we can eliminate and ideally lower all math class seat counts. However, after my meeting with my site supervisor, I was informed that the district needs to increase its attendance rate by 1% or the district will not receive the 5.5 million dollars from the state that helps pay teacher salaries. Wit that being said, if we don't need our concept courses, we could possibly lose a math teacher and our math class seat counts would stay in the upper 20's instead of being able to lower them.
So along with my quantitative test score analysis, I will have to track the attendance rates throughout the district as well.

Action Research Plan

Goal: To find how effective geometry concept classes are on my campus

Action Step 1: Interviews
Person Responsible: Myself, vice principal, geometry teachers and students
Needed Resources: A compiled list of questions
Time Line: September 1-15, 2010
Evaluation: Interviewing students and teachers about how students bet learn will help create the foundation about the effectiveness of concept classes

Action Step 2: Surveys
Person Responsible: Myself, students, Geometry Teachers
Needed Resources: Survey Monkey, teacher and student cooperation
Time Line: September 16-30, 2010
Evaluation: Gathering information from teachers on campus about their perception concerning concept classes and class size will help create a background for reasons that concept class are or are not effective courses on campus. Questions I will also ask is why we should or should not keep these courses.

Action Step 3: Collect quantitative data
Person Responsible: Myself and data processor
Needed Resources: TAKS and Benchmark scores
Time Line: October 2010- April 2011
Evaluation: What are the average TAKS scores and grade averages for all of the sub population groups in the concept and regular geometry classes.

Action Step 4: Teacher Observations
Person Responsible: Geometry Teachers and myself
Needed Resources: Journals
Time Line: September 1, 2010 - January 20, 2011
Evaluation: Keeping a weekly journal will allow me to write accurate descriptions of the learning that is going on in classes. This relates to research because the journals from both concept and regular geometry classes will be compared and discussed.

Week 2 Reflection
After completing the first two weeks of this course, I have a better understanding of the benefits of Action Research as a teacher and administrator. Action research can be time consuming, however, from reading articles and listening to the videos, I am convinced I need to incorporate it into my daily routine.

Leadership Blogging

Leaders in all areas could benefit from blogging because it can create a support system and another resource outlet for them. Many times leaders feel they are dealing with certain situations where answers cannot be found online or in textbooks and need some guidance, blogging could be a quick answer for them. On the other hand, leaders could have dealt with a very difficult situation and came out exemplary and feel that it needs to be shared for others to use. It's a win win!

Reflection of Action Research

Action research can be used in a plethora of areas of concern in the education system. Administrators can use it to explore their options on how to better their campus as a whole, department coordinators can use it to improve their departments staff resources and collaboration, and teachers can perform action research to improve their curriculum instruction to increase each students success in the classroom. There are two main concerns I have on our campus that I would incorporate action research for. The first one is our campus climate and culture. Even though we are one of the top schools in the district I feel our student body and campus leaders need to have a better understanding of each others wants and goals. The second concern I have is geared toward my department which is business and that is gaining and maintaining enough students in the core classes we offer for several reasons.
In regards to y first concern, I would ask the administrators to allow our pep rally's be held in the court yard where all students gather before school to see if student body participation increased. I would also ask if we could create a pep rally bell schedule for those days instead of holding them at 8am when the majority if the students haven't even arrived to school yet and cannot make special arrangements to show up to school early just to attend.
When creating an action research plan for my second campus concern, I would like to ask my department teachers to create a 30 second to 1 minute exciting presentation to take to our feeder middle schools in order to show them the benefits our of courses.
At the end of the year I would analyze and reflect the numbers of participation for both of my action research plans to find any success or failures and where the research plan could improve