Changes

I met with my site supervisor on August 3, 2010. We spent about an hour and a half going over my draft Action Research Plan. During the meeting my supervisor suggested several changes that I might want to consider in my plan. One suggestion he made was that I should narrow down my topic and focus specifically on Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students instead of the entire 8th grade. We examined the breakdown of TAKS scores and he pointed out that these were the students that were having the most difficulty passing science TAKS. For Hispanic students only 69% met the standard and for the economically disadvantaged only 68% met the standard. Another thing we looked at was the scores for these students on the other TAKS test subjects. This really made me question my entire research plan. I would have thought originally that if these students were performing low in one area, they would be performing low in all subjects due to a possible language barrier. This is not the case here. Below are the scores for Hispanic and economically disadvantage students:

Hispanic Students:
Reading 93%
Writing 97%
Social Studies 97%
Mathematics 85%
Science 69%

Economically Disadvantaged Students
Reading 94%
Writing 98%
Social Studies 93%
Mathematics 81%
Science 68%

By examining these scores and talking to my site supervisor, I believe that there is possibly a problem in the science curriculum or the presentation of the science curriculum. Based on this information I will be reexamining my Action Research Plan and making adjustments in my wonderings.