July 2005 — SETDA
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Closing the Achievement Gap: Nevada's Churchill County School District
The downside to the project was teaching somebody else's units. As an objective participant to another's work, I could see ways to make the lessons more functional and fluid. At least five times a day, I would stomp over to my teaching partner's room and say, "I am just going to fix this and do it the way that is best!" He would calmly reply, "You will skew the data. You have to do it the way that it is presented. Don't skew the data." It became something of a joke between us that I would totally skew the data trying to make something more functional. Ultimately, the process made me more reflective about my own curriculum because it made me realize that I had to be as objective and critical of my own work in order to deliver quality instruction.Exit-interview strategy. Then there was the testing and the data. Learning to write test questions that measured depth and breadth of student understanding required a sharp learning curve, because teachers generally feel more comfortable with knowledge questions rather than application or synthesis. The students also completed a performance assessment, which was a new tool for those of us who have been teaching for 10 or more years. But the portion of the assessment that proved to be the biggest headache was the exit interview. What do you do with a class full of 30 children while conducting 20-minute interviews that involve five students? We eventually figured out after the first round of interviews how to interview students without the resultant anarchy in the classroom. The exit interviews gave us insight regarding what we did right and what lingering misinformation was still in the consciousness of the students. This further reflection allowed me to go back to the lesson and see just where the "holes" existed in the unit.
Analyzing the Data
As the piles of test papers and performance assessments grew, so did the anxiety of grading and loading the information into a spreadsheet. I was fortunate enough to find a parent to help me get the data numbered and organized. However, loading the spreadsheet and mailing off the data was tantamount to giving birth; relief flooded over me as I dropped the manila envelope into the mailbox. In the end, I had loaded around 1,600 pieces of data, graded 600 tests and performance assessments, and conducted 120 exit interviews.
As I began to analyze the data, I couldn't see a real difference in the scores. I came to the conclusion that good teaching was just good teaching. One of the units that I taught did not have enough of a technology component to even be considered in the study. In fact, my control group ended up performing better across the board than my experimental group on that particular unit. However, when the data was disaggregated, the results were astounding. Our subpopulations of American Indians, girls, and special-education students in the technology groups did significantly better than their peers in the control groups. This information was a wonderful answer to my original hypothesis: If technology is used for science instruction, then student achievement will be greater.
Ultimately, the experience of developing curriculum that would scientifically determine whether technology made a difference in student learning really made a difference in me. While my hubris became a tail tucked between my legs, it d'es occasionally get a chance to wag. Technology in the classroom is like air, I just couldn't get along without it.
Kerri Angel is the department chair for eighth-grade science at Churchill County Junior High School in Fallon, NV. E-mail: angelk@churchill.k12.nv.us
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