After meeting with my principal and considering my options, I have decided to pursue after school tutoring as my action research project. The question I pose is, what qualities make up an effective after school tutoring program? We are a Bilingual/Title One campus, with about a 76% free/reduced population, demographically, we are about 60% Hispanic, 30% African American, and 10% everything else. Because we are Title One, tutoring is more of an expectation and less of an option. Since it is something we are going to offer, regardless of it's impact, I think we need to do everything we can to make it as effective as possible, as to not waste the time of students or teachers.
Being so far into the school year, I don't see any point in asking people to change what they are currently doing. Instead, this is the time to collect data and ask questions of those teachers who show improving test scores for students whose only intervention is tutoring. The general data I would like to collect on the teacher side would be student attendance sheets, time sheets, and a rough idea of what was done during tutoring. From the student side, I want to know the grade trend from previous years, the first benchmark score, and either the CBA score or the STAAR score.
Once the initial data has been collected, it would be a matter of focusing the project on one grade level. Then, looking at the grade level, I could narrow my field to only those students who have been in our school for two or more years. It is at this point that I am undecided as to how to filter my study group. Would it be better to look at students who have historically been scoring anywhere from at 50 to a 70, or should the focus be students who have historically made passing grades until this year?
After the initial data has been collected, I would need to begin researching other options. This is where this week's lesson really comes into action. I am actually looking forward to finding articles that address this same issue and see what others have found to be a beneficial path to follow.
For next year, I would hope to be able to put into place a different tutoring program. Ideally, we would be able to have two programs in place, having half of the building using something new and more thoughtfully designed and the other half continuing with what is currently being done. Such a set up would make for a more interesting comparison. If this is not possible, then having the data from this year would allow for comparison of programs.
I would appreciate any insight that you might have in regard to selecting a specific study group to pursue. Also, if you and your building are currently running a effective tutoring program, at the elementary level, I would love to hear about it!
This is excellent! I feel like a lot of campuses could benefit from your research (They would obviously have to tailor it to their own situation)! I guess I'm unsure why you need to only study students from a specific time period? Why only the past two year? Of all the students attending tutorials this year, find any information on their scores from last year (passing or failing), and compare them to the current year, as well as next year's scores. (Or part of next year, since you will have to have this done before May). Then, you can collect data from every scenario/type of student (ie - repeat failures, new failures, at risk failures). You could break it down into those different "demographics" and try to see what those "repeat failures" need from tutorials to get them out..and to stay out. Does that make sense? Let me know if you need me to elaborate.
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