SUMMARY OF MY ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AS OF MARCH 29, 2013

 It is taking longer than I expected to complete my Action Research Project.  The main reason for this is the data analysis portion of the project.  The discipline reports are a lot harder to interpret than I expected.  I had to learn how to read them before I could really get into my research.  Despite all of the delays, I am confident that I will complete the project and give my recommendations to the administration by the end of this school year.  At this point, I have completed several important action steps of my plan.  The first thing that I completed was to collect student discipline data from the administration’s discipline database for both the first and second six weeks of the 2012 – 2013 school year.  I obtained those reports form the Principal.  I also got the explanation of the individual discipline codes from the assistant principals so that I could understand the consequences given to each offending student.  Once I obtained the data, I began disaggregating it for individual students by discipline code and consequence assigned.  The data analysis has taken several hours to complete.  I developed a spreadsheet to enter the data that I collected.  I broke the data down into individual students and the different discipline categories and the consequences for each six week period.  I am in the process of comparing the two sets of data.  I am comparing if the consequences that each student received in the first six weeks resulted in a decrease in that behavior for each student in the second six weeks.  I anticipate that I will be finished analyzing the data and will have a report of my findings and recommendations written for the administration by the second week of April.  From what I have seen in my analysis so far, the consequences of the offending students are effective for some but not for others.  I hope to develop a more effective set of discipline consequences for our administration to use in the future.  I do not wish to radically change everything because some of the consequences are effective.  I am planning on meeting with several different administrators from different schools in the next week to give me some ideas.  If all goes as planned, I will be done in a couple of weeks.