Winding down with this course.   I feel like I have learned why research is important in the field of education.  For myself, I think the plan I have picked for my school may have a real impact.  I have been talking with my fellow teachers and have come to find out that we have very few parents that are checking their kid's grades  on line.  As teachers, we are puzzled by this because  a lot of the kids that you would expect to be keeping up with this, are not.  We know the parents have access to the internet because we get e-mails from them but then when we ask them to check Power Schools, they act as if they know nothing about this online student information/grade book system.  I am hoping my project can change that for this coming school year.

Action Research Plan

 
SCHOOL VISION:

We will provide students a challenging curriculum in a safe, nurturing, and positive learning environment.

GOAL: What is the relationship between parental use of Power Schools (a web based student information system that incorporates an online grade book) and student academic performance? In what ways can our school encourage parental use of Power Schools? Therefore, the goal of this plan is for our school to actively encourage parental use of Power Schools in order to increase academic performance. The goal of my plan is to implement methods used by the administration and teachers at my school to encourage the use of Power Schools by parents. The outcome of my plan will hopefully be to show that an increased use of the program has also led to an increase in student academic performance.

 

OUTCOMES	ACTIVITIES	RESOURCES/ RESEARCH TOOLS NEEDED	RESPONSIBILITY TO ADDRESS ACTIVITIES	TIME LINE	Benchmarks/ ASSESSMENT
Determine the final core (ELA, Math, SS, Sci) academic grades for all current 7th grade students at Dawkins Middle School.	Obtain data from Power Schools to determine the grades for every 7th grade student at DMS in their core academic classes.	Power School	Joel Jacobs Mr. Steve Martin, Asst. Principal at DMS Amanda Dobson, Dir. of Instructional Technology	5/24—6/1	Completed data
Determine the amount of access by parents using Power Schools for the 2011-2012 academic year.	Obtain data from Power Schools to chart the amount of access to the program for each student.	Power School	Joel Jacobs Mr. Steve Martin, Asst. Principal at DMS Amanda Dobson, Dir. of Instructional Technology	5/24—6/1	Completed data
Chart the relationship between the use of Power Schools and academic performance.	Create a spreadsheet that correlates students grades to Power School access.	Data from the Power School printouts	Joel Jacobs	6/1—6/15	Completed spreadsheet
Determine teacher perceptions regarding the use of Power schools by parents and academic performance.	Create and distribute a survey to all teachers in the school to measure their perceptions regarding Power Schools and academic performance.	Survey, possibly Survey Monkey.	Joel Jacobs	3/18—5/21	Creation of and completion of survey. Analysis of survey results and creation of a document to illustrate survey results.
Learn more about the use of Power Schools in other districts.	Conduct a review of pertinent websites relating to the use of Power Schools; this will serve as a type of literature review.	Internet and educational journals. Manuals from the district office regarding the Power Schools program.	Joel Jacobs Amanda Dobson, Dir. Of Instructional Technology	3/18—5/21	Completion of a literature review
Implement strategies to increase use of Power Schools by parents.	Work with teachers and administrators to implement possible strategies to increase Power School use by parents. Implement the strategies created by the staff of DMS.	Schools phone master program. Schools website. Teacher websites and personal pages on the Power School site.	Joel Jacobs Staff and faculty of DMS	6/1—8/15	Creation of and implementation of school wide strategies.
Determine the final core (ELA, Math, SS, Sci) academic grades for all current 8th grade students at Dawkins Middle School for the first semester of the 2012-2013 school year.	Obtain data from Power Schools to determine the grades for every 8th grade student at DMS in their core academic classes for the first semester of 2012-2013.	Power School	Joel Jacobs Mr. Steve Martin, Asst. Principal at DMS Amanda Dobson, Dir. of Instructional Technology	1/14—1/23/2013	Completed data
Determine the amount of access by parents using Power Schools for the first semester of the 2012-2013 academic year.	Obtain data from Power Schools to chart the amount of access to the program for each student.	Power School	Joel Jacobs Mr. Steve Martin, Asst. Principal at DMS Amanda Dobson, Dir. of Instructional Technology	1/14—1/23/2013	Completed data
Chart the relationship between the use of Power Schools and academic performance.	Create a spreadsheet that correlates students grades to Power School access.	Data from the Power School printouts	Joel Jacobs	1/24—2/8/2013	Completed spreadsheet

After the work for week two, I now see that much of action research is data driven.  This is going to be something that I will have to learn to understand more fully.  I have trouble seeing how you can quantify anything that has to do with people and their actions; to me there are too many variables. Because we spend more time teaching Johnny to read a different way, that makes him score better on a test?  What if he scored better on a test because on that particular day, he was lucky? I don't see the control factor in research dealing with education.  Maybe after conducting my own action research plan I will.  That is my hope.

Action Research

     Action research is research that does not just attempt to explain a certain educational shortcoming; it is research that hopes to correct shortcomings within a school. It is a tool that allows for real staff development.  I have attended many staff developments where we are “talked at”.  The Dana text was right on point in that regard.  Action research is where staff development becomes an action, not just a lecture.  The staff works together to identify a shortcoming or need within their own school and then works collaboratively to offer real, workable solutions to the identified problem.  

     For my interest this year, I want to study technology and parental involvement as they relate to student achievement.  Will increased use of one simple aspect of technology by the parents increase student academic performance?  Two years ago our district began using Power Schools as a grade book.  Parents can access this on a daily basis to see their child’s grades, assignments, teacher notes, etc…  Teachers can see which student’s parents are checking this and that information tells the teacher the date that the parent accessed the information and how long the parent spent looking at their child’s grades.  I want to track the current 7^th grade in their science classes this coming school year, when they are 8^th graders, and see if a push on the part of the school to get parents to access Power Schools leads to an overall increase in academic performance during their 8^th grade year.  I think that this is important to research because it may be a very simple tool to increase both parental involvement and academic performance.  An action research plan could show if there is indeed a correlation between the two. 

     A principal could make use of blogs as a very effective form of communication between many different stakeholders.  He could set up a blog to communicate with parents and the PTO, set up a community blog for the school that shows off the success of his school, and possibly even set up a student blog to allow for student suggestions.  The latter would have to be handled very carefully.  Of course, the principal could also avail himself of participating in established blogs that discuss current trends in the educational field.