So What's the Plan?

Hey everybody, so today I just turned in my research proposal. This was a really big task that required a lot of work to plan out how I will be conducting my research, so I am really happy and feel really accomplished that I finished this task. However, now that this task is behind us all, it is time to create a timeline and actually plan out when I would like to have each part of my research done.

Because of this, here is my timeline: (BTW I hope that you like my usage of this outdated meme)

January 8: When I return from winter break. I want to begin my collection of the general information about BASIS.

January 15: I would like to be finished collecting my general information about BASIS, and would like to have my surveys sent out to teachers. Additionally, I would like to have scheduled interviews with teachers.

January 22: I would like to be done collecting my surveys and will have begun my analysis of the data I received. Additionally, I would like to be in the middle of conducting my interviews, and will have started my classroom observations.

February 3: By the time that I finish attending class, I would like to be done with my interviews, be working on analyzing the data, and be in the middle of conducting my classroom observations.

February 10: I will be more than halfway done with my classroom observations. Additionally, I will be finished with my analysis of my surveys and interviews, and will be starting to analyze the data I have collected so far for my observations.

February 16: I will be done conducting my classroom observations, and will be finishing up my analysis of my data.

February 26: I will be done performing my analysis of the data, and will be working on writing the results portion of my paper.

March 10: I want to be done with the results section of my paper.

March 17: I want to have a draft of my paper finished.

March 24: I want to have a final draft of my paper.

April 2: I want to have my presentation done and memorized.

April 17: Present final presentation.

Now, the second part of this post will be about how I plan to analyze and present my results. For my methods, I have to sort through and organize information for three different methods, all of which needs to be analyzed and have meaning extracted from it. In order to do this, the first step in this process will be to organize the information collected into categories depending on whether the information is about BASIS students, its teachers, or its administrators. From there, for my data, I will then look to see what the data says to determine what parts support or reject the different parts of my hypothesis. Although I am not completely sure how I will accomplish this task, I plan on organizing my results for the classroom observations into a table based on the specific criteria that I looked for. Also, I believe that I will be able to extract meaning from my surveys by measuring how frequently teachers give a similar response to an answer. Lastly, for my interviews, I am unsure of how I will conduct my analysis because the results that I will be getting are very qualitative.

I look forward to getting your guys’ feedback on my timeline and your thoughts on my data analysis procedures. Until next week!

May the Best Researcher Win...

Hey everybody,
So here is the link to my elevator pitch on YouTube.
Research Elevator Pitch
I hope that I receive the imaginary funding; however I know that there will be some tough competition to win. That being said, may the best researcher win...

So How Am I Going to Do Any of This?

Hey everybody! Looks like it is time for another blog post again. Since the last blog post, we all did our methods assignment and made some pretty big steps in determining how we planned on conducting our primary research. Because of this past project, which we turned in yesterday, and us starting our research proposals, today’s blog post is going to be all about the methods I intend to use for my project.

For those of you who are not familiar with my project, I intend on analyzing a high-achieving charter school to determine what characteristics make the school successful. In determining these traits, I will essentially be performing a mini-ethnography on the school that I will be studying to try and gain as comprehensive of an understanding of the school as I can. On the largest scale for my project, I intend to compile all of the different theories that I have read in the literature which focuses on the components of a successful charter school, and create a list which I will systematically evaluate to determine which quality is important and which is not (no big deal, its gunna be super easy right?)

Anyways, in order to determine which of these characteristics are actually important, I intend to use a combination of surveys, interviews, and classroom observation to understand the personal components behind what makes the school successful. Additionally, I have a source which provides a form of the necessary information that should be obtained about a school when it is being studied. This will be useful when trying to gain a comprehensive understanding of the school.

Although it may seem like I know what I am doing, there are still a lot of unanswered questions that I have. The first issue that I have is that I still do not know which school I will be studying. I would like to be able to study BASIS Scottsdale, since it is the highest ranked school in the state and I already have easy access to the school and its students and teachers; however this raises some ethical issues. Because I go to this school, I already carry some bias and preconceptions about the school, and so it might subliminally affect my results. If I can follow strict research methods, though, which allows for as little interpretation as possible, then I might be able to limit this bias.

Another problem that I would have to overcome would be obtaining access to school records and student profiles. Since most studies within my field use demographic information to contextualize the study and student test scores to determine the school’s achievement, obtaining this information is a vital component of my research. Again, there are ethical implications involved with disseminating this information to me, especially since the information will be about my peers.

My final problem is determining which grade to study. I would like to focus on BASIS’ upper school, because not only is the upper school highly ranked, but there is also more testing data to work with for these students. This is because the lower school only has state standardized tests which can be used, whereas the upper school also has AP, SAT, and ACT scores which can be used in my analysis. Once again though, there are ethical implications involved in studying a group that I am already familiar with.

Alright, enough problems. Although I still have a lot of work that I need to do, I am feeling pretty good about where I am at right now, especially since the methods assignment helped me a lot in actually figuring out what I want to do. Right now I just need to focus on solving these big couple problems; however, after that, I am hoping that my project will be smooth sailing. Anyways, that is all. Cya next week!

Episode IX: Return of the Blog Post

Hey everybody! This last month and a half since the last blog post I made seems like it has gone on forever. To put how long it's been in perspective, when I wrote my last blog post, the second presidential debate hadn’t occurred yet, people still weren’t stressed about November 1st college application deadlines, and I was still only working on my outline for my literature review. Obviously, a lot has happened since then!

    In this time, I went from a line of reasoning, to a fully completed, peer edited literature review. Although the refining and writing process was full of roadblocks, redbulls, and revisions, in the end, I’m proud of the finished product.

To me, it is crazy how much I have accomplished in less than four months of being in AP research. I know, that for the first few weeks of the class, I felt as if I was floundering around when I did not know what I wanted to do for my project. However, after I figured out that I wanted to research the components of successful charter schools, I found that this resulted in greater motivation and a better quality of work.

    After talking broadly about what I did this past trimester, I am now going to discuss what I did in a little more detail. After determining what my general topic of inquiry was, I then read most of the important literature surrounding charter schools, how they perform, and the theory behind their origins. As I read each source, I took notes on the important details and compiled this information on both a google document and in the spreadsheet. After reading my sources, I was then given the task of writing the annotated bibliography for the 20 or so sources that I had read on my topic. Although it was a significant task, I found that it was really beneficial for me because it made me think about the connections between my sources and the implications of such. As a result, this was really useful in helping me to construct my line of reasoning.

    Throughout this process, the line of reasoning was probably the most difficult part. Although I had the annotated bibliography to help me out, the line of reasoning is what requires the most brainstorming and thinking. That is because it is during this time that the connections and organization for the paper is created. Although it is not a very fun task to do, this is the segment that determined how good my literature review is. After that though, I found that the most difficult part of the actual literature review was cutting it down. For me, my sentences are often very verbose, and so it was somewhat of a struggle to not only cut out unnecessary information, but to also make my phrasing more concise.

    Now that the literature review is done though, it is time to move onto developing my research methods. I know I have mentioned this in the past, but this is still something that I am somewhat apprehensive about. As I stated in the past, I am still unsure how exactly I plan on going about designing my independent research; however, the fact that I now get to dedicate time to focus solely on answering this question is comforting.

    I look forward bringing back the blog posts and keeping everybody up to date on what is happening on my project. Until next week!

The Good, the Bad, and Something in Between

First of all, I would like to begin by acknowledging how cringey my title is (believe me I know). Unfortunately though, that's all I could think of, so oh well.

    So for today’s blog post, I am going to be focusing on three main things: something about my project that gives me hope, something that I feel meh about, and something that makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry myself to sleep.

    Although crying in a ball sounds like a lot of fun, I am going to try and start this post of on a cheerful note about what is going well with my project and gives me hope for the months to come. In this category, the first thing I want to talk about is my interest in the project. We are almost two months into this class, and I am still intrigued by my topic and the nuance and complexity that comes along with it. Even after all of the time and work I have spent reading sources, taking notes, and working on assignments, I am still just as curious about the answers I am looking for as when I began. And while this may seem not that important, to me it is not only important, but also encouraging because I tend to lose interest in projects fairly quickly if I am not intrigued by the subject. Additionally, I am also happy about the general progress that is being made. I believe that for the time that we have spent on everything so far, I think that I am at a pretty good spot. While there are still concerns that I certainly need to address (which I will), I think that I am at least managing what is expected of me pretty well.

So now from the good to the meh.

Right now I feel pretty meh about my list of sources. On one hand, I am pretty proud of all of the sources that I have already collected and annotated, but on the other hand, I still feel like there are a couple more sources that I need to find. Luckily, I do not need any more core sources for my paper, but instead I only need a couple supporting sources to clarify or substantiate a couple sections that need more evidence.

And now to the part where I talk about what makes me want to hide under the table and pretend like my project doesn't exist.


(Me when I was writing this part of my post)

For this section, there are three main things that I want to focus on: my methodology,  how I will overcome bias, and how I will overcome the legal troubles of writing about basis. Regarding my methodology, I know that we do not need to know what exactly we intend to for our primary research, however it has been brought up to me that this is something that I should start thinking about now. Being that my project is about charter schools, I intend to spend time within some charter school/schools to try and draw conclusions about what it is that makes them successful. With that in mind though, I do not know whether I will be focusing solely on Basis Scottsdale, or if I will be analyzing other schools as well.

Additionally, another aspect of my project that worries me is how I will overcome bias in my analysis. Because I will most likely be spending a large amount of time looking at BASIS Scottsdale, I will need to find a way of justifying why I can still do qualitative analysis about the school, even though I have attended this school for many years. Because I already have preconceived notions about the school, I feel as if it may affect my results. As of right now, the only way of overcoming this bias that I have thought of is by justifying BASIS’ position as a good school, which I can use to explain why I want to look at it.

Lastly, I am concerned with the legal implications of looking at BASIS Scottsdale. Being that BASIS is a highly ranked and well regarded school, they want to maintain this high reputation. With that being said though, I want to try and perform as realistic of an analysis of the school as I can, even if that means that I find faults with the BASIS system (which I’m sure I will as no system is perfect). Being that I attend BASIS though, I feel as if there will be a conflict of interest if I am publishing results about a school which not only has power over me, but wants to project a certain image about their school which I may not fully support.

So with all of that being said, if you guys could help me with some ideas on how to overcome these setbacks that I have, then I will pretty much love you forever.

(Word Count: 831)

A Meta Analysis of Research Questions and Charter Schools

Hey everybody!

So this past week (in addition to the several weeks before that,) was spent meticulously reading, noting, and annotating our sources, which culminated in us creating our annotated bibliographies which were due today. Although it was not intended to be an arbitrary checkpoint in the research process (which it is not), it is still satisfying having a means of quantifying or demonstrating the work we have done so far. While I am proud of the many (and yes I mean MANY) hours that I spent working to construct my annotated bibliography, it is time to move onto constructing our outlines for our literature reviews. The first step in this process, which also happens to be the subject of our blog post, is to create our research question, which can be created only after reading the literature that pertains to my field. With that in mind, here it is:

“How are successful, high-achieving charter schools in the state of Arizona founded and maintained to uphold their creationary goal of improving educational practices?

First of all, while this question is as specific as it can be right now, I do envision it needing to be tweaked, especially considering that it will depend upon how I structure and conduct my research. That being said, let me justify why I think my question is pertinent to the field of charter school education.

From my research, I have found that their is a conglomerate of types of charter schools that all differ in educational philosophy, intended demographic, funding, educational and administrative techniques, etc. With that being said though, all charter schools have the same general over-arching purpose, which is to provide the students they enroll with the best educational opportunities to allow them to succeed in their designated fields of interest, whether that be in art and music, or math and science. From the reading I have done so far, several researchers have argued that there are universal traits that high-achieving charter schools employ to be successful. According to one researcher, these traits include autonomous school leadership, active recognition and measurement of academic achievement, strong staff relationships and professional development, a sense of belongingness from students,  parent and community support, and high quality social systems surrounding the students. Another study, however, argues that an extended school day and year, an emphasis on recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers, data-driven monitoring to track student progress, and making the effort to change culture of achievement, are what creates successful charter schools.

Being that there is a disparity between this research, I intend to observe charter schools (although I do not know in what capacity yet) to see what techniques result in benefit among student outcomes. Although I do not know if I will be focusing only on BASIS Scottsdale, or other BASIS schools as well, or other charter schools, or if I will be comparing BASIS to a public school, I still think that this question can be answered, regardless of which route I pursue. With that being said, I understand how this means that my question is most likely too vague, but until I determine my methodology, I think that it will suffice.

Delving into the actual wording of the question itself, a few words that I need to analyze are “Successful” and “high achieving.” Although the definition of this will differ based upon school, in general, when I use these words, I mean how effectively do these schools teach their children the material they need to learn, and also how do their results compare to other schools in the local area. Since this is a fairly subjective definition, school achievement is generally measured using standardized test scores since it is one of the least biased methods of conducting this type of research.

Moving on, I chose to focus on the state of Arizona for my research since this is the state that I will be conducting research in. Additionally, I used this as a means of narrowing down my scope. With that being said, I may need to change how narrow my scope is by focusing on the phoenix area, or by focusing on a specific type of charter. However, once again, I think this level of specificity cannot be exactly determined until I start designing my research.

The last part of this question that needs to be analyzed is the “founded and maintained to uphold their creationary goal of improving educational practices?” part. For this segment, I chose to say founded and maintained because I want to know how these schools operate, both in the classroom and at the administrative level, to see what it is that allows them to achieve more than other schools. Lastly, the “creationary goal of improving educational practices” part describes one of the purposes of charter schools, which is to develop new and effective pedagogical methods which can then be implemented elsewhere. If these schools are receiving higher test scores than other schools, then they must be doing something right. As a result, I want to determine what it is that they are doing that allows them to achieve these scores.

As per usual, I hope you were all intrigued by my long winded explanations of material that only I am fascinated about.

Until next time,

That crazy meta kid who is doing a school project about school

(Word count: 890)

When you form your thought process into a sequential set of points that can be described by some function

Hey everybody! Being that today’s post is going to be a lot longer, a lot more dry, (and a lot more horrible to go through), I thought that I would start with an encouraging and optimistic meme that describes my cheerful sentiments towards this class.

Purpose of literature review:

1. Understand what charter schools are and why they were created.
2. Understand the various perspectives for analyzing charter school achievement and analyze what the differing results say.
3. Understand the difference between how charter schools work in theory and how they work in reality.
4. Analyze why certain groups benefit more from charter schools than others.
5. Justify why looking at BASIS Scottsdale can provide insight into the industry as a whole.

Theme 1: Charter Schools in Theory

• Premise 1: Charter Schools were created to be autonomously run, yet publicly funded, educational institutions where new pedagogical and administrative methods could be tested out and implemented to try and increase the quality of public education.
• (Betts and Tang 2011), (Berends 2015), (Ladd and Bifulco 2006), (Lubienski 2003)
• “Charter schools are public schools funded by the government, but their governance structure differs from that of traditional public schools in that they are established under a charter run by parents, educators, community groups, or private organizations to encourage school autonomy and innovation” (Berends 2015)
• The purpose of charter schools is “to promote educational innovation, diversification of educational programs and learning environments, and expanded opportunities for teachers to become more involved in program design and school governance” (Ladd and Bifulco 2006)
• “As the first state to authorize charter schools, Minnesota established them as vehicles to "(1) improve pupil learning; (2) increase learning opportunities for pupils; (3) encourage the use of different and innovative teaching methods" (Minnesota, 1991, 124D.10, Sub. 1). This language is exactly the same in at least 14 states, and nearly verbatim in many others.” (Lubienski 2003)
• Sub claim 1:  With this goal in mind, some charter schools were created to provide alternative schooling options to fit the needs of specific demographics of students (i.e. special education, high achieving, arts oriented)
• Sub claim 2: Other charter schools were created to allow for greater community or parental input/involvement in the educational process (greater feedback from teachers, stronger influence on the curriculum)
• Premise 2: The effects of the charter school industry can be analyzed using Market theory, which is the economic perspective on charter schools, and Institutional theory, which is the sociological perspective on charter schools.
• Sub claim 1: Market theory is the economic approach to analyzing charter schools which looks at the impacts of charter schools on students and believes that greater competition in the education industry will result in greater gains in student achievement.
• Sub claim 2: Institutional theory is the sociological approach to analyzing charter schools which claims that although charter schools are intended to be different from public schools, in practice both schools end up looking more similar in how they run and operate than different, which results in not much academic gain.
• Sub claim 3: While they do not explicitly state which perspective they use, most studies which analyze charter school achievement use at least one of the two approaches, however that often use parts of both.
• Sub claim 4: These are the two conflicting theories which research attempts to answer to see which one is more correct.
• Evidence 1: Berends 2015 provides an overview of the progress that has been made in charter school research over the course of their existence. In this, he discusses the various approaches used to analyze the effectiveness and achievement of charter schools.
• Evidence 2: Lubienski 2003 analyses and critiques the market oriented approach which he takes to analyze charter schools, while also comparing the technique to the institutional theory. He concludes that charter schools provide an alternative to the monarchistic reign that public schools have on the education industry, which results in greater competition, and therefore improvement

Theme 2: Charter Schools in Reality

• Premise 3: Charter Schools are often run by management organizations to oversee the administrative and business oriented parts of running a charter school
• Sub claim 1: Management companies can be either for-profit (called EMOs), or nonprofit (called CMOs).
• Sub claim 2: The existence of for-profit management organizations not only raises ethical questions, but also allows for the potential mismanagement of funds
• Sub claim 3: Despite the potential risks of EMOs, both CMOs and EMOs generally produce the same levels of achievement
• Sass 2004 provides a meta-analysis of charter schools in the state of Florida and demonstrates that for-profit companies see no difference in achievement from nonprofit counterparts
• Premise 4: There is a large variation in the effectiveness and achievement of charter schools
• Betts and Tang-studies show both
• “Examining all of these results as separate parts of a whole, we conclude that overall charter schools look to be serving students well, at least in elementary and middle schools, and probably better in math than in reading. There appears to generally be more variation in the results for math than reading.”
• Premise 5: General trends show that traditionally disadvantaged groups (those that are low income, need special education, or are a minority) benefit most from charter schools.
• Sub claim 1: The existence of charter schools has helped to close the achievement gap between high and low income areas
• CREDO 2013 is the largest ever study conducted in the field of charter school research. After analyzing the test results of several million students, it revealed that disadvantaged groups of students tended to benefit the most from attending a charter school.
• Premise 6: The quality of charter school education tends to improve after several years of operation
• Sub claim 1: The data implying that the level of education increases for charter schools that have operated for a longer period of time may be skewed as a result of ineffective charter schools closing within their first several years of operation.
• Solmon, Paark, and Garcia shows that over time, charter schools exceed public schools in reading and math.

• Premise 7: Although charter schools are given greater autonomy, this also results in less accountability among the schools
• Wells 2002 takes a more pessimistic view of charter schools by looking at what is wrong with the charter school system and how it needs reform. One such point she brings up is the lack of accountability of charter schools, especially in the state of Arizona, which at the time had the strongest laws in favor of charter schools
• Counterclaim 1 : The closing of ineffective charter schools, as well as for the addition of new, more comprehensive studies shows that while lack of accountability is still an issue, there are countermeasures in place to help combat this issue.
• Counterclaim 2: Additionally, new studies have shown that charter schools have improved student achievement in some locations, which implies that if students are learning more than if they had attended a public school, then the school values improving education and therefore feels accountable for their actions.
• Research Question: What about the charter school BASIS Scottsdale results in its high achieving academic atmosphere?
• Justification for question: As has been seen, there is a large variation in the types, purposes, and quality of charter schools. However, despite the countermeasures in place to prevent the continued existence of ineffective charter schools, many still persist today. However, to help alleviate this problem and potentially find ways of improving these schools instead of closing them, one method would be to do an in depth analysis of a successful charter school. Being that BASIS Scottsdale is the best charter school in the country, it is a prime candidate to be analyzed for this purpose.

After looking at my line of reasoning, I understand and expect that some claims will need to be moved around or embellished, but I think that this includes most of my major claims that I will need to include for my literature review. Also, I have a lot more evidence that I can include to support my points, but as of right now, I am more focused on getting my claims down than on burying everything with evidence. Anyways, I hope you all enjoyed this thrilling post, and are excited for those coming in the future.

(word count: 1374)

*insert crying meme again*

my mind when I finish writing these posts.^

Papa Johns and the Free Market System

Hey everybody. Over this past week, we as a class spent a large chunk of time watching, analyzing, and deconstructing John Oliver’s segment about the ubiquitously horrible and corrupt charter school system run by a bunch of greedy selfish monsters (*cough* sarcasm *cough*).  It was truly eye opening to realize that I am nothing more than a sh*tty pizza (I don’t know if I can swear in this but I’m just gunna go for it) being made by a Papa John’s pizza shop. Sarcasm aside though, I did find it particularly helpful to dissect Oliver’s argument about charter schools, especially considering that my project revolves around charter schools and what it is about specific one’s that make them more successful than others. (This also explains why I just randomly knew all those statistics about charters schools).

Anyways, in addition to learning more about my topic as the class discussed the video, I continued to read more about the multitude of studies and meta-analyses that attempted to understand and describe the state of charters schools throughout the United States (a task which I have learned often results in super vague conclusions). After reading a bunch of 50 plus page papers and trying to decipher some crazy cryptic statistics, I began to understand how all of the various influences can affect the performance of a charter school.

To understand how these various influences (socioeconomic status of student and community, state charter laws, school philosophy, etc.) affect student outcomes, two sources that can be put in conversation with one another are my sources by Christopher Lubienski and the Center for Research on Education Outcomes from Stanford University (CREDO). To save you all the boredom, I won’t go to in depth regarding what each one is about; however, in order to put them in conversation with one another, I have to provide at least a brief description of each.  With that being said, the Lubienski source is one of the foundational sources regarding the theory behind how charter schools affect the educational industry. From what I have seen, this paper is often cited in other well-known studies, and is one of the most important papers regarding market theory and education. On the other hand, my CREDO source deals far more with actual results than theory, as it is not only the most current study regarding the effects of charter schools, but it is also the largest one ever conducted in the field. As a result, it provides the most accurate data concerning the level of achievement of charter schools.

What is interesting to note between these sources is that in theory, having a greater number of options for schooling should result in increased achievement for all schools, because the competition between charter and public schools should result in both parties improving their teaching methods. However, in reality, charter schools have far fewer positive gains than would be expected. Although there are numerous social factors at play, this discrepancy between actual and expected results is one of the largest ongoing debates in this field today.  This discrepancy also helps to justify my research, because providing an in depth study of one of the most successful charter schools has the potential to help understand why some charter schools excel, and others fail.

Anyways, hopefully that last part was not too boring and dry. I am currently writing this in a redbull fueled, post vector-calc take home test dazed state and so I can’t really tell. With that being said, I’m signing off now, because I probably need some sleep. (593 words)