At Risk Students

I wanted to clarify my research plan.  I will be focusing on at-risk students who only earned 2 or 3 credits after one year of high school.  I will also be looking at a group of students who participated in the 9th Grade Transition Program.  This includes the bottom 10 percent of the class.  I will compare whether the transition summer program helped last year's freshman as compared to the previous year.  

Action Research Plan

My action research topic is evaluating the factors that allow students to graduate on time with their peers. I will be focusing on the at-risk students. I will be conducting student and staff interviews as well as analyzing data from PEIMS, AYP, and an internal database used by my district to track at-risk students from 9th grade on. I will be using my past experiences working with students in the Opportunity Center, a community designed to help students recover credits, and my work as a coordinator in that setting. I will then compile my findings and share them with my Small Learning Community. Based on my findings, data, and input from my colleagues, I will then present a report to my site supervisor.

My Action Research Plan

I am very passionate about my current research topic.  I do not think we can ignore the fact that many students are not graduating on time with their class.  This not only affects the school's rating, but moreover, it hurts the soul of the student.  As teachers and administrators we need to find a way to reach these students.  There has to be a way to help them.  The states reportedly spend more money per year on prison inmates than on individual students.  This is just a vicious cycle that must be broken.  I am going to see what other schools are doing in other states.  I will find a way to help these students.  I will not sit passively by.

Researching and Blogging

     Action research is a way for principals to get involved in solving problems on their campus.  It involves analyzing data, exploring patterns, and coming up with a plan of action.  Using this process is a timesaver for busy professionals.  Although it may seem more time consuming at first, in the long run it will save everyone lots of time.  This research process is non-traditional because it puts the principal in the driver's seat.  It also allows the principal to enjoy the benefits of increasing collegiality, becoming and modeling lifelong learning, promoting BEST practices, and the opportunity to become proactive.  Although many educators do not like the idea of exposing problem areas on their campuses, this air of transparency will be beneficial in the long run.  By sharing information on blogs and journals, principals can have a wide variety of ideas to build upon.  It may be uncomfortable at first, but with time, he or she will see the benefits of sharing.  In our technological society today, sitting in an inservice, in isolation, will no longer suffice.  We must embrace the technological age and the age of social networking.
     The topic that I would like to research deals with helping the bottom ten percent of the freshman class.  Many of these students finish off their first year with less that three credits.  It is almost impossible for them to catch up with their peers. Things must be in place to help these students before they get further behind.  Many of these students have emotional and discipline issues.  A few of them may have serious learning disabilities that may or may not have been diagnosed.  Schools need to find a way to reach these students.  Teachers and administrators must find a way to accept them in their classes.  These are students who are often shipped off to alternative education programs.  My school currently has a program for incoming freshman called a transitional summer program.  I would like to view the data on the group of students who participated in the program and see how they are doing now.  I would like to research what interventions have been used by the teachers of these students.