Action Research Planning...

For more information on my action research on TAKS Math remedial courses see posts below. This is my action research plan:

Action Research on TAKS Math Remedial Courses:

Goals and objectives:

The goal of this action research is determine if forcing students to take remedial Math courses aimed at passing TAKS in addition to their regular Math courses helps students achieve greater success on TAKS. The hopeful outcome is to engage in conversation about the efficacy of these courses. If they work, why doesn’t everyone take them before taking any TAKS test? If they do not work, how can we make changes that will provide the help students need to succeed?

Activities:

• Interview pertinent parties (i.e. administrators, teachers, students, parents, etc) about remedial courses both the parties being studied and those that are not being studied.
• Review data pertaining to past success/failure.
• Meet with targeted classes to assuage any fears and explain the goals.
• Determine how to assess progress of students and then assess. This may be done by giving students a pre-test and post-test to check for knowledge gained and also by looking at TAKS results, but since TAKS is an uncontrollable variable it may be prudent to work with Math teachers to devise our own assessment tool.
• Publish findings on the blog.

Resources:

• TAKS data provided by our campus administration.
• Knowledge gleaned from interviews of professionals in the field.
• Professors at Lamar University and other available institutions.
• Guidance from various related texts to be outlined in the final product.

Draft timeline for completion:

Since the project involves TAKS testing and retesting a probable timeline for completion would be July 2011. Much of the work on the project can be done in the Fall 2010 of course but completion wouldn’t necessarily be available until all re-takes were exhausted which may even fall into the 2011-2012 school year.

Persons responsible for implementation:

The researcher will be responsible for planning and executing most of the work. The principal will determine the who, what, when, and where to his discretion. Teachers may assist, if applicable, in handing out and grading materials.

Process for monitoring:

At this point, the hope is that monitoring can be done by getting honest feedback from interviewees and analyzing various data. Data may be taken from quizzes given in the remedial courses to more formal assessments like benchmark tests and TAKS testing.

Assessment of the Action Research:

It seems right now that the research will be complete when we have comparable values. When we can look at the scores of student X on the 2009 TAKS Math versus the scores of student X on the 2010 TAKS Math and determine what, if any, improvement there will be. Hopefully the process will allow us to ascertain the efficacy of the remedial courses.