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!
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, September 8, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
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!
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!
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