A New Level of Awareness

Toward the end of my five weeks course on action research I “accidently” discovered I had to obtain permission from the Research, Evaluation and Demographics Officer from my district in order to perform my research on my campus. He emailed me a document outlining what I needed to submit. Once I read through, what seem to be a very daunting process, I became extremely discouraged. I finally made the phone call to Dr. Hall today and after a lengthy and informative discussion I hung up with great excitement and anticipation. We started our phone conversation with going through the document. He assured me that it only looked daunting but that I would find parts of it would not be applicable to what I would be doing. The conversation quickly focused on the question of the types of data I would be collecting. This is where the crux of the request lied. The concern is protecting the identification of the students to comply with FERPA. Of course this is what I had come to realize the reason for the strict guidelines. I explained my inquiry and my plan. He told me that I could give him the teachers’ names and he could get the data for me and blank out all names. After more discussion I realized that he was referring to TAKS data and I clarified that I would also wanted to use DCAs (District Common Assessments). This complicated things. At this point he told me that once I aggregated the data I would then need to submit this to him to be approved by the Associate Superintendent. He then began asking me more specific questions about my inquiry. This is where everything turned around! Once he had a clearer picture of my inquiry he began offering suggestions. Instead of using the data I was thinking about I should look into using Quantile scores. “Quantiles are similar to Lexiles in that they provide a standard measure of achievement that may be applied across student populations locally, statewide, and nationally. Once a student’s Quantile score is known, instructors may view the QTaxons (specific mathematical concepts, skills, or topics) and relate a student’s score to the curricula to determine if a student is on pace with instruction.” (Chris, 2006) Students would be hand selected from one class and then similar students from the other class are selected to match the previously selected students; similar meaning if one student is Hispanic/EcoDis then the same would be selected in the other class. He would get the Quantile data for both groups, the control group, students with the teacher who has beginning who is at beginning tech level and the treatment group, the students with the teacher who has at advanced tech level. We will be looking at more on how the role of the teacher in the ability to integrate technology will effect student achievement. During my times observing I will be taking field notes on the differences of the classrooms – what does integration of technology look like in each of the classrooms. Bottom line is, this will prove to be a challenging quest, yet I feel I have the support I need to accomplish what I need to do. I am confident that this will be a great learning experience and will help prepare me to become an effective leader in the field of technology.

Resources:
“Chris”. (2006) What is quantile anyway? Pearson Education. Retrieved from http://www.formativeassessments.com/blog/2006/09/what-is-quantile-anyway.html