EDLD 5399: Week 3 Part 2

Part C

Describing Recommendations and District/Campus improvement initiative/Action Research

The purpose of my action research was to improve scores for African American and Hispanic students at the campus level.  The first step was to develop a discussion on how to affect at-risk students.  I took our district administrative training and created a campus wide book study.  I established an Edmodo account and had teachers post questions and discussion topics to the board. The title of the book was “Teaching with Poverty in mind”.  This is an excellent book, to inform teachers about what many of our low socio-economic students are facing.  This book places emphasis on changing the mind set of teachers.  The book study lasted about one month. Next, I had teachers visit high achieving schools with similar demographics. I used this as an opportunity for teachers to learn what others are doing differently and how to apply it to our campus.  Afterwards we took the ideas back to our campus, and had a discussion to determine what is plausible for our campus.  Next, we requested that the district have successful mathematics coaches from our district/state, come in and train your staff. As a department,  we came to a consensus on a model that we wanted to implement on our campus.  We built in evaluation to constantly assess the effectiveness of our program. 

This plan was designed for all students, but it places an emphasis on African American and Hispanic students.  The results of the action plan helped improve our schools overall dropout rate, which will improve the community as a whole.  We made a concerted effort to include members of the community in the program.  We made calls, held conferences and sent letters out to parents and local business to provide time, materials, or money to help with the tutoring program.  This proved to be very beneficial.  We were able to provide the students with small snacks, during tutoring sessions. This process including the proper planning led to the success of our program

The management aspect was very difficult.  The budget crisis eliminated the majority of the money we were expecting to have at our disposal. This required us to go to the community and ask for money.  Local Businesses provided about $4800.00 in monetary donations.  Kroger’s provided the school with about $800 dollars in snacks, finally office max provided about $200 in office supplies. We were able to use $1500 dollars for professional development for our entire math department.  We went to different high achieving schools, that had a similar demographic to ours, and were trained by their math department on using “best practices” in reaching those students. In an effort to save money, each teacher was given one “best practice” to specialize in.  The teacher was responsible for incorporating their practice into each unit.  This cut down, on having to provide professional development for all teachers, which would have cost a significant amount of money.   We also implemented more formal assessments, to involve monitor our progress towards meeting our goal.   The remainder of the money was used to compensate teacher for Saturday morning tutorials.  Teachers were paid $15 dollars an hour for a three hour session.  We would have eight Teachers (two from each subject) for two hours. It cost us about $240 per Saturday.  We were able to get members of the community to volunteer. We also used the donations to provide snacks to our students. We also incorporated a rewards component for students that constantly improved.  They were given small snacks or gift cards to local restaurants. This helped encourage students to work harder, which improved the overall culture of the program.

As a result of our hard work, student’s cores improved from a 47 to a 72.  While Hispanics improved from a 49 to a 78.  This was a vast improvement of from last year.  We met our goal with Hispanics but missed it with African Americans.  The “best practices” that were the most effective with each group was:

 Recommendations:

1.      District needs to create a district wide plan of action to address our at-risk population.

2.      District needs to talk with campus level administration about developing campus-specific professional development to meet the campus needs.

3.      Provide professional development to Administration to ensure that the schools have the tools to affect change.

4.      Have schools create a plan of action, with measurable objectives and timelines.

5.      Assign curriculum coaches to each school to assist in the implementation of the plan.

6.      Provide teachers professional development and training

7.      Provide funding to purchase the necessary resources

8.      Evaluate the plan and make adjustments as needed.