More fun with data!

So after putting together all the Scottsdale data profiles last week, we had a 3 hour meeting about workshops today. In this meeting of course, they decided to change a whole bunch of things about the workshops. This does not change much for me personally, but adds more work for my coworker, who usually does projects with me. I guess that means I will probably have more to do next week since she won't be able to do as much on the profiles.

I now have almost 120 data profiles to go over. Some have already been started, thanks to a project we did earlier this fall, but others are brand new. I only got about an hour of work in on them this evening, so I will have to crack down and do as much as possible on Friday. It is going to take forever to get them all done - and of course we are all leaving for Christmas, so I need to get it done before then.

On top of that, I still have to do my regular job. I am so tired it's killing me. Oh well, at least I don't have classes right now on top of this, like I will Spring semester!

Work

I'm so sick of grading papers! I keep thinking that if I just assigned less work, it would be better, but then I'd feel like a bad teacher. Ugh. I want to improve education, which is why I'm getting an MPA, but I'm not sure teaching is the best profession for me right now. It's so frustrating to work 50+ hours per week for the salary that a teacher gets. Anyway, I'll stop complaining now. I've just been grading for too many hours and it's getting to me.

Data profiles

Well, I finished up the Scottsdale district data profiles yesterday, except for the parts that I can't do. My mentor has to put together part of it, so I'm waiting for her before I can completely finish them.

Other than that, the association is trying to get a grant to help out South Phoenix charter schools. The data team needs to determine how many schools there are in South Phoenix, and compare them to the district schools in the area, to convince them we need funding. It is surprisingly difficult to do this. Last time we tried we ended up with a weird boundary for what constitutes "South Phoenix." This attempt the boundary has been redefined, which might make our case stronger - I won't really know until we start compiling data. I suppose that's what I'll be working on next week.

I'm still really tired from being sick. It is not fun working two jobs when you feel icky. :(

Internship update

Due to my recent illness, I have not been working much on my internship. Yesterday I did some work from home though, and I think I will be doing more of that this weekend. Even though we are the Charter School's Association, the head of my dept has managed to get a contract with Scottsdale school district. We will be doing a workshop for them about using data to monitor student growth. I think it's pretty cool, since I'm sick of the animosity between districts and charters. There is no reason we can't work together, and this is a good thing for both parties. The workshop is in a week, so we have to get the data together for their schools before we go out to present it. It also helps to target the presentation more towards their needs. Yesterday I started putting data profiles together based on the charts provided by another employee. If we can get them together sooner, rather than later, we can start working on the next set of schools and actually be ahead for once. It looks like things are going well for now!

Sick, again

Arg! I hate my stomach. I have been feeling sick for a couple of weeks, so I went to the doctor and they thought that I had a hernia. It has taken me 3 weeks to get an appointment and it has just gotten worse. This morning I called and said I was in too much pain and needed to see them today if possible. The hospital managed to fit me in and I had an X-ray series. Of course, as is my luck, they didn't really find anything. I do not have a hernia, I have a little bit of acid reflux, but that was all he said. Supposedly my primary doctor will be calling back with a more detailed report. I am so tired of not knowing what is going on and feeling sick all the time. It is so frustrating!

Conference - part 2

Wow, working at that conference was exhausting! The first day I got there at 7:30 am and worked until 7:30 pm. We ended up leaving the reception and going to bed at like 9 because it was so tiring. It was fun, but there were so many complications that it was physically draining. The resort screwed up our meals, so the sponsors were irritated and yelling at association staff. Then the volunteers that were supposed to help the presenters didn't show up to do their jobs. It was annoying. Eventually the conference planner got fed up and took on the resort personnel - which was highly effective!

On the second day things went much smoother. The volunteers still didn't do their jobs (for the most part), so we just took over those duties. After getting in trouble with us on Monday, the resort actually started doing what they were supposed to do. Then we could focus more on what the attendees actually thought. Many of them seemed happy with the conference, so that made it better.

I just can't believe how many problems there were when it had been planned so carefully. I feel like I have so much to learn about these things. It was definitely a learning experience, to say the least, so I'm glad I got to work on it. Hopefully I will be able to use these lessons later in my career.

Conference

Tomorrow begins the Charter School's Association annual conference. At first I was only going to be able to attend on Tuesday due to an inservice on Monday at my school. Turns out the inservice was really just a work day, so now I get to attend both days. I'll be heading up to Carefree at 6 am tomorrow (the downside of going on Monday), and I get to help out with a couple of sessions that I might actually like. The coordinator set it up so that I'd be supervising rooms during some of the teaching sessions. Friday all we did was make copies and organize everything, and the first group of Association employees headed up today. I think it will be fun, and I'm looking forward to blogging about it when I get back.

Workshop

Well, it all worked out. The workshop on Friday ended up being moved from 1 pm to 1:45 pm, so ran out of school at 1 and made it to Surprise just in time. Unfortunately I was the first one there. I wandered around the school for a bit, waiting for my team to get there, and they finally got there close to 2 pm. I hate being late for things, so that was pretty stressful for me. Since we got started late, a few things were cut out of the program and we didn't get to debrief at the end. It was anxiety inducing - to say the least!

After the workshop I headed back to the office to pick up some stuff I left there. While there I saw my beautiful new cubicle. They are actually really nice, they have windows and a nice design. I'm excited to work in it!

Cubicles!

So it looks like I won't get to do the workshop tomorrow. No one can cover my lunch supervision duties, so I wouldn't get there in time. Maybe next time.

On a brighter note, when I go in tomorrow I will have a cubicle! No one but me would be excited about this, but up until now I've been working at a desk in the middle of the room connected to the desks of 2 other people. I hate talking on the phone because there are always at least 2 people that hear every word I'm saying. The open plan also makes noise carry from all the offices into the intern area, which makes it hard to concentrate sometimes. Now we'll have our own cubicles! With walls! I'm so excited!

Boring day

On Friday, I finally cracked down and decided to go through the database. The combined files had 3 different listings for some items, so I had to go through and double-check each to make sure they matched up, then delete the columns that were no longer needed. It was pretty tedious. I am glad I did it though, because some of the data didn't match up and I had to go through and fix it. Actually that was quite a few of them, so I suppose it was a valuable use of my time - just boring. We might have an accurate record of each school now!

This upcoming Friday there is an opportunity for me to do a workshop in Surprise. The catch is that the workshop is at 1 pm, and I get out of school at 1 pm. Technically I stop teaching at 12:15, so I think I'm going to ask if I can leave then to try and make it to Surprise. I really like the workshop stuff, and it definitely beats sitting in the office working on databases (the alternative), so I hope it works out! It is a new school, which would be a different experience than the ones I've done previously. I'm sure I'll blog about it either way, so you'll know in a few days if I get to go.

I love Surveymonkey

So, we decided to send out a fall survey to all the charter schools to gauge interest in a few projects that are being considered. I helped write the surveys awhile ago, and now we are approaching the deadline. At first, the results I was given to analyze were only in Excel. Normally I'm a fan of Excel, but for this particular purpose it was pretty overwhelming. Some of the surveys were done on surveymonkey.com, so I went there to see what I could do with them. It is awesome! It will analyze them for you and you can download the results into a variety of formats. I love it! Unfortunately, about 50 of the surveys were done by hand and mailed in. I started putting them into Excel, but then someone at the office suggested that we just input them ourselves into surveymonkey so that it will tally up all the results for us. I put in about 15 of them today and it is going much faster.

My other task right now is kind of boring, but necessary. The database we have is getting clogged up with repetitive data. We're getting information from different sources, but some of it is stuff we already have. I have to go through and clean out the duplicated columns. That would be simple, but sometimes the data doesn't match, so I have to double check them all. It is much more tempting to work on surveys than to sift through data. I guess it is part of doing research though. Sigh.

More excitement. . .

This weekend we went camping. It was pretty nice, a little hot during the day, but perfect at night. On Friday night, we were all up sitting around the campfire, and my friend's dog starts chasing something. Then my friend just started screaming at the dog to get away, and I looked over at a giant tarantula. I've never actually seen one in the wild, so it was really weird. It was very gentle though, and not that scary once we actually got close to it. We chased it into a bush and never saw it again. The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful - on the Arizona end.

Then I got a call from my mom on Saturday saying that my sister was in the hospital. Apparently she is having contractions (babies not due until Dec.) and they are trying to stop her from going into labor. I wish I was still in Seattle, since I'm sure my family is completely nervous, but I can't really afford to take more time off. Hopefully everything will work out okay. Even if the babies are born now they should be allright. I'll update you on what happens when I hear something!

Family excitement!

Currently I am in Seattle. I came up here for my sister's baby shower and to visit the rest of my family (I'm a Washington native). The shower was on Saturday and was really cute. She is having twin boys, so there were lots of matching outfits and blankies and it almost made me want to have a kid. Then there was today.

I woke up to the phone ringing, and my mom telling me that my sister needed to go to the doctor. I had to get up to go watch my nephew while they figured out who would be going to the doctor and who would be taking my nephew (18 months) to speech therapy. It was divided up so that I went to the doctor with my sister. She was itchy this morning, and it turns out that itchiness, if you're pregnant, can mean that your liver is failing! How weird is that? We went to the doctor and she got her liver tested and they checked her skin and everything and the doctor didn't seem nearly as concerned about it as my sister was, so we took that as a good sign. It seems that every time I visit her I want to have a baby less and less. Why is everything so extreme during pregnancy?

On a happier note I got to see the ultrasound (they checked the babies just in case), and they got a great shot of one of their faces. He is adorable!

Data! Arg!

The greatest frustration of this internship is that none of the data we receive seems to match up. On Tuesday, I was at the office until 7 pm trying to figure out how to present test scores to compare district and charter schools. For some reason, the data reported by the Dept. of Education is not the same for district and charter schools, which makes direct comparisons impossible. We also found that some districts will be reported as not meeting AYP (adequate yearly progress), even when all of the individual schools have met AYP. How can a district not be meeting something if all of the schools in the district met it? Inconsistency drives me nuts!

Issues with other states

This week I came in to find two data requests waiting for me. The first was to organize data about alternative schools in South Phoenix, which, though time consuming, is fairly simple. Once I figure out what exactly I need to report I should have it all somewhere in the databases. The other is the complicated one.

For a conference bid, I'm not sure exactly why, we need to report data about Arizona and all of our bordering states. This wouldn't be that difficult except that the data requested is nearly impossible to obtain. The organization wants the last day of school for all of the states, which is determined by the district or individual school. Therefore I'll have to generalize all of that information and hope it is acceptable. They also want the testing dates for state-wide standardized tests for each state through 2012. As far as I can find, Arizona is the only state that publishes test dates out that far. California has them published through 2010, but they have 9 test dates per year. Sorting this out is not fun, but I suppose it will help me learn how to deal with difficult requests. At least the experience is useful!

New schools and surveys

This past week and current week I've been working on updating our lists of closed/open schools. This has been surprisingly difficult. It turns out that no one really keeps records of charter schools except for the state board, and they tend to only know about the ones that they authorize. However, despite complications, I think I'm just about finished. Now I'm working on adding all of the contact for the newly opened schools so that we can send them out to the national organizations to update their records.

We also sent out a survey to all of the charter schools and the results are starting to come in. I started trying to organize the results today, but it will definitely take some time. The results are extensive, and sifting through them for an hour today got me practically no where. If I figure out an easy way to do it I'll post it, just in case anyone reading this has to deal with sorting survey data!

Sleepy

Today was very tiring. I taught this morning, and since I was sick for 2 weeks, I'm terribly behind on work. Due to that issue, I've been slower than normal with my internship work.

When I went to the Charter Schools Association for my internship we had tons of work to do. My task for the day was to make scatter plots for individual schools. The idea is that we plot all of the schools and show each one where they fall as far as academic achievement and student growth are concerned. I think it puts things into perspective for people when they have a graphic representation of how they compare to other schools. A number of schools have shown an interest in this, so today we were working on putting together their data files. It was actually kind of fun, so I managed to finish all of the schools we had complete data sets for. Hopefully these charts will lead to increased interest from schools and increased opportunities to do workshops. We have done 2 workshops so far and are hoping to expand into different areas. I have a lot of time constraints right now, but I like the workshop idea and the plan seems to be that I will work on them more once we get these data files finished.

Picking up

Well, I have some work to do again. Yay! We've had a few data requests at the Association, and I usually get to work on them. Most of my time now is spent figuring out statistics about Arizona charter schools vs district schools, or vs other states. My responsibility is to sort through it all, update our database so the open and closed schools are accurate, and report all the new information.



On a bright note, the AIMS science scores came out and charters did great! The best scores in the state came from charter schools and Mesa Unified School District. That's some fun data to report. We'll also have the new AZ Learns results soon (early Oct according to the Dept of Education). AZ Learns is how Arizona gauges a school's compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act. For charters, it helps to determine who can stay open and who gets their charter revoked. As soon as the new data starts being released, I will have a lot more work to do, which I'm looking forward to.

Sick

Well, I'm sick again. I already had some type of cold in August, now I've got a different one. Hope it goes away soon.

Internship work is slow right now. We just finished setting up a workshop for this weekend, so now I'm back to working on data tables. Unfortunately, I'm at a point where the data I need from the Dept. of Education has not been released to the public. This means that I can't really create the tables that I want to create, and I'm trying to come up with new ideas for the data I already have. It isn't that exciting. Tomorrow I will start working on a new project, so that will help. I hope that I feel better by then.

It begins. . .

Hi fellow students! I will be blogging this year about my experience as an educational research intern. I actually started interning this summer and have continued my internship into the school year, despite the fact that I have another full-time job. It should be an interesting time, so I'm happy to share it with you.

Originally I did not set out on this path. I had planned to be a veterinarian all through college, and ended up changing my mind after entering vet school. Since I then had no career prospects, I went back to school for a Master's in Education. Working on my Master's research sparked a policy interest that I had been keeping under wraps for far too long, and I taught for one year before deciding to go back to school to study policy. Now I'm pursuing my MPA, teaching science, and interning at the Arizona Charter Schools Association as a Research Associate. I also teach in a charter, so I can see myself heading in the direction of charter school promotion - hence the blog name. Hope you enjoy my adventures!