To start this post off, I just wanted to begin by discussing my current progress and what I was able to accomplish this week. To quantify my progress, as of right now (although I plan on doing some more tonight), I am currently in the middle of reading my sixth paper. In addition, I have several more sources that I have compiled that I have not read yet, as well as for several people and leads that I need to look further into. To give a more holistic approach, I feel as if I am continuously working on narrowing down and refining my research as I read each source and learn more about my field. This week, the majority of my reading was primarily about charter schools, including information about what they are, their history, and their overall effectiveness.
Now, to get back on track with what I am supposed to talk about, for my literature review, I anticipate that a large portion of it will consist of defining what charter schools are and what the current debate surrounding them are. To go more in depth, I plan on defining what charter schools are, followed up by a brief history of their existence, and then what their purpose is. After providing this general information, I intend to discuss the overall effectiveness of charter schools and how this conflicts with their intended purpose. From there, I plan on delving deeper into the debate and academic conversation about charter schools by looking at the different approaches of looking at charter schools, including the market theory approach, which is more from an economic perspective, and then a sociological perspective, which focuses on understanding the social factors, including demographics, social atmosphere, etc., that contributes towards the success or failure of a charter school. As I am going into the different ways of analyzing charter schools and the debate that surrounds them, I can include how charter schools have to succeed, otherwise they will be shut down.
After I am done discussing the general debate between charter schools, I can start providing information about what creates a successful school, and more importantly a high achieving academic environment. After discussing some important pedagogical methods, I then intend to explain why BASIS (maybe just Scottsdale, maybe the other ones too, I don’t know yet) will be the school that I will be focusing my research on. Since it is the best charter school in the country, and the second best school in the country, I can assert that the school is doing something right to produce such high achieving students. As a result, by immersing myself in its academic atmosphere and really understanding everything that is going on here, I can then determine what it is about the school that makes it so successful. From there, I can finally explain my goal of how I want to find specific aspects about BASIS that can be replicated in other charter (or maybe even public) schools in order to increase their academic performance as well.
So I know that I am already 100 words over the minimum word count, but keep reading guys because talking about sources is obviously super fun. Anyways, one of my foundational sources that I want to discuss ( I know so fun) is my source by Mark Berends. This paper by Berends, which was actually only published a year ago, provides a general overview of the debate and history surrounding charter schools over the approximately 20 year period that they have been around. Although this source has some important information in it, what was more useful about it is that it provided me with some of the most important sources in the field since it provided an overview of the history of charter schools. Because of this, it was really helpful in finding other sources and areas of inquiry to pursue.
Lastly, after watching the video, I would love to put together a rebuttal video against what John Oliver said about charter schools. Although I agree with the fact that there are some corrupt charter schools out there, I believe that he cherry-picked evidence and painted charter schools as a whole in a bad light. If we could spend class time discussing this, then I would be all for it, however even if we do not, then I would still like to work with the people in either the other research or class, or just Mrs. Haag, to put together the video. Being that my research topic is directly tied to what he discusses, it explains why I am so passionate about this idea.
Anyways, once again, I went way over the word count in this post, but it helped me to think about my literature review in a more concrete way, so it doesn’t really bother me. One last thing though, before you go, I just wanted to say sorry about how many times I said "charter schools." I know it was a lot. Okay, you can go now.
(word count: 835)
Brian! I loved your post -- never apologize for going over the word count. The point of these blogs is for you to sort your thoughts out, so if that takes more than 400 words, it's fine!
ReplyDeleteIt seems like the John Oliver project is most relevant to your project, so it'd be both fun and productive for you. I'm glad we'll be doing it as a class, and perhaps you can emerge as a leader, given that you'll be more of an expert.
I think the plan for your literature review sounds good -- you're moving from general (charter schools) to more specific (BASIS). My only concern is that it may be hard to go from charter schools to high-achieving academic environment to BASIS -- maybe high-achieving academic environment, then talk about how charter schools do or do not meet that, and the introduce BASIS? IDK just some thoughts.
Hey Brian! I love the dry humor going on in your blog post (talking about research papers—so fun). Also it’s great that you feel so passionately about the topic, and that you can find new insight from John Oliver. You pretty much covered everything that you need to cover in your literature review, organized and everything, so that’s amazing. GOOD JOB!
ReplyDeleteI’m ignorant but isn’t the only different between Charter Schools and public schools and private schools the funding??? You should also explain this in the lit review. Also isn’t “charter school” the only name for a charter school, so it’s the only name you can use, right?
Also make sure not to be based because you go to BASIS Scottsdale so you’re like a “high achieving student”. Also how are you going to determine whether what BASIS Scottsdale is doing is contributing to their producing higher achieving students or not? Like idk how to word this but what I’m trying to say for example is if you found a difference between BASIS Scottsdale and like BASIS Chandler, for example, how would you determine that Scottsdale is the one doing the right thing while Chandler is doing it wrong? Like Scottsdale produces better results but that doesn’t mean that everything they do is right (Do you see what I mean?) I suck at explaining things.
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ReplyDeleteHey Brian,
ReplyDeleteSo wow you seem to have your literature review pretty well planned out and organized. I think you covered most of everything that you will probably need to justify and explain, so that is good that you have your established launching point. Like Mrs. Haag mentioned, I think you need to find a more definitive reason to pick BASIS Scottsdale. Is your paper about how charter schools can be high achieving, because then our school is a good example of this. But if you want your paper to be more representative of how charter schools in general function and succeed/fail, I do not know how BASIS Scottsdale can truly be representative of a holistic view of charter schools, even focusing on our school would be so interesting and fun. I think it really depends on what your paper will be focused on and how that will unfold. Other than that, I really do not see any feasibility issues and your source seemed pretty concrete and influential, so there seems to be some good research out there! You better be really helpful with this whole John Oliver thing? plz our school can win, it would be great we can show that #BASISpride also #cashmoneyflow
(um also I accidentally posted without my full response so sorry for deleted comment I promise it wasn't me trashing your post or anything, but I guess you will never know???? #illuminaticonfirmed)