Things have been very hectic.  I have been trying to get ready for the STAAR exam, keeping up with my Lamar class, family, etc.  Looking forward to the end of this course.  I have enjoyed it, but I am looking forward to a few days off.

The Action Research Project is coming along.  We have had a change in the attendance clerk and with the STAAR testing I have not been getting the data to track for this week.  Hopefully with the new person in place I can get back on track for next week.  The decrease in tardiness seems to be consistent and not just a fluke.  I am excited about that. 

Action Research Update

Action Research
The research has been going pretty well.  I have encountered a few problems.  One of the problems is that I have to get the information from another source to input into the hallwalker system.  I am supposed to receive the information right after school.  Unfortunately, she may not always get it to me before I leave for the day or I may have something planned and I can't stay late to input it.  This is an issue because the date that shows up on the tardy sheet is the date it was inputted.  For example, if a student was tardy on 3/15, if I have to wait until 3/16 to input it, it looks like the student was tardy at 3/16 and the time is going to show up after school hours.  This has been an issue with several parents.

My principal has begun to do after school detention for 1 or 2 hours.  I think this has helped to bring the tardy problem down.  When I first started inputting tardies, I had 17 pages with 10 students on each page.  As of late, I have only had 3 pages.  That is a huge reduction.

Obstacles to Action Research Project

One of the obstacles I am going to face is similiar to many of the other students. This will be time consuming. For my project dealing with tardiness, I have to manually input the tardy students' information daily. That's about 80 - 100 students. Some of them have multiple tardies in one day. For each student I have to input their id number and print off the paper that shows their consequences and give it to the asst principals. This is time consuming.

Another obstacle is getting quality time to discuss the depth of the problem, progress, and solutions with my administrators. They are all very busy. We have brief conversations, individually, but I have not been able to have a collective meeting of the minds to truly understand the depth of the problem and all of the implactions for the school and the individual students.

The biggest obstacle is getting the students to class on time. There are some students, I am afraid, that no matter what we do for consequences or rewards they won't comply. Some students don't care. We can not solve the problem until we really understand the problem. Hopefully this research will not just be a band-aid solution.

My Action Research Plan

My Action Research Plan

·         Goals and objectives

Reduce student tardiness by 50%

·         Activities designed to achieve the objectives

Students will report directly to class and the teacher will mark the student tardy vs. going to the attendance clerk and being marked tardy. 

If the student is more than 15 minutes late to class that will be considered an absence.

Students who are not absent or tardy for a week will be able to wear jeans the following Friday.

We will also have random Tardy Sweeps where students will receive immediate consequences for their actions.

Students will continue to receive consequences such as ISS, detention, and out of school suspension.

Administrators and teachers will encourage students to get to class on time while in the hallways.

·         Resources and research tools needed for data gathering

Hall Walker Tardy information

            Teacher Attendance Reports

            Daily Tardy Reports

            Weekly Perfect Attendance/ No Tardy Rosters

            Detention/ ISS Sign-In Sheets

            Attendance Dashboards

Feedback from teachers

·         Draft timeline for completion or implementation of activities

           Feb.2^nd – April 2^nd

           We will analyze the data at that time to check for decline/improvement.  We will consider

           any changes at that time.

·         Persons responsible for implementation of the action research plan

Mrs. Ranson, Principal

Ms. Camarena , Asst. Principal

Mrs. Conway, Asst. Principal

Mrs. Chester, Admin Intern

            Mrs. Early, Attendance Clerk

• Process for monitoring the achievement of goals and objectives

Data will be collected and analyzed weekly. 

            Create charts and share data

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

            Hallwalker Tardy System

            Attendance/ Tardy Reporting System

Week 2

This week's assignment has been very informative.  I really liked the opportunity to look at the 9 different areas where action research has been used and can be used on campuses.  Looking forward to learning more.

Ideas for Action Research

There are many issues on campus for administrators to use action research.  Issues can range from tardiness to gang issues and they would all benefit an administrator to use action research to come up with a solution

How I Will Use Action Research

Action research is a systematic way of investigating a situation.  The process includes recognizing there is a problem, asking questions, collecting data, reviewing the data, developing a plan of action and follow-ups.

Traditional educational research is where administrators are more negotiators vs. problem solvers.  They examine the practice looking for improvement.  This research is more “process product research.”  Action research focuses on concerns of administrators.  During action research, administrators engage in design, data collection and analysis.

My school has a huge problem with tardiness.  I plan to use this course to apply the skills I will learn from action research.  The administrators have already acknowledged this as a problem.  I will begin to work closely with administrators, staff and teachers to begin to analyze the problem.  We have a data system that is collecting the information regarding the amount of tardiness.  The research aspect will be more in regards to the cause of students wanting to be tardy.  In every action there is some sort of reward.  There is something these students are getting out of being tardy and until that is determined we will continue to have this problem.  After I have had a chance to work closely with other stakeholders, I very much look forward to things getting back to normal.