A Force Field Analysis of My Situation...'cuz...DANG!

I just want to share what I'm up against. I don't think anything before this activity has really made me articulate it in one sitting before.  A brief Force Field Analysis of my topic follows:

1. The current situation is that a large number of students on our campus (between 40% and 50% of students in each grade level) cannot read at nationally-normed benchmark levels according the Winter 2011, Spring 2012, and Fall 2012 Universal Screens administered with Renaissance Learning’s STAR Reading assessment. This is the root of a vast number of issues on our campus including, but not limited to, the following: difficulty with core curriculum, discipline referrals, low-performance on STAAR assessment, student apathy, and growing classroom management issues. Up until this year, a real Tier II intervention has not been available for these students.
2. The proposed change back in the late spring of 2012 was to redistribute my class loads of eighth grade English language arts students by assigning most of those students to the other two eighth grade ELA teachers and open up four sections of Reading Improvement. These sections would be open to students in all three grade levels, as they would be fully differentiated and instruction would be available to each child at his or her point of need regardless of grade level. The proposed interventions for this class were the following: (a) forty minutes per day for the first four days of each week students will read audio books selected at levels based upon a slightly modified Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) as determined by the STAR Reading Universal Screen, (b) students will maintain a summary bookmark for each book made from an accordion folded full sheet of notebook paper allowing them to chunk the book into eight sections and summarize each section as they read, (c) students will take Accelerated Reader (AR) Reading Practice quizzes over each book that they read, (d) students struggling with vocabulary (as determined by the Istation Indicators of Progress (ISIP) assessment) will also take available AR Vocabulary Practice quizzes to track understanding of Book Level vocabulary, (e) remediation from the available Vocabulary List report and "Vocabulary Boxes" worksheets will be given to children who perform poorly on these, (f) Progress Monitoring will be conducted weekly on the fifth day using the STAR Reading assessment, (g) Progress Monitoring and Diagnostic Testing will be conducted monthly using the ISIP assessment, (h) students will engage in differentiated practice on the Istation platform on the fifth day following Progress Monitoring assessments, (i) parents will be notified by letter and by email (as available) of how to download Istation components to their home computers so students can continue remediation practices at home, (j) all work in the Istation platform will be monitored bi-weekly to assess progress and inform tutorial instruction time.
3. If no change occurs, based on the last three Universal Screens, we will see either a continuation of or worsening of the noted trend. Up until now, we have always gotten children who are reading below grade level when they’ve entered the sixth grade. We have always worked hard, especially at the seventh grade level using tutorial sessions to implement portions of the Read 180 program and encouraging the use of audio books for regular AR reading for low-level readers.  The result of this, thus far, has been that the fifty percent of sixth graders not reading on grade level drops to about forty-five percent by seventh grade and to about forty percent by the eighth grade.  If no change occurs, we can expect to continue to remediate around ten percent of our student population leaving forty percent unprepared for the rigors of high school.
4. The forces driving the proposed change are manifold. My personal desire to institute an authentic RtI paradigm on our campus is one driving force. The fact that we are seeing more and more children reading at lower and lower levels when they arrive at the sixth grade is another. The rigors of the STAAR test demand that students not only be able to read on grade level, but that they be able to think critically about topics that should be mastered within their grade level by the time of the Spring Assessment windows. This requires the students to be able to function in their core classes while working to bring their reading ability up to par. The rigors of high school have become even more daunting since the advent of the STAAR End of Course (EOC) exams. Since students now need to pass twelve EOC tests to graduate, it has become more imperative than ever that they be fluent readers before they leave middle school.
5. The forces resisting the change are also many. The greatest of these might be that by the sixth or seventh grade, many students who have not been able to function on grade level for many years have simply given up on the hope of ever being able to perform adequately in an academic environment; their day is filled with simply passing the hours, attempting mischief, and often dealing with discipline issues. Another force resisting the change is the sheer number of students at risk versus the lack of adequate resources to serve them all.  I cannot cram forty-five percent of an 840 student population into four fifty-minute classes.  The circumstances call for something more along the lines of three reading interventionists (one per grade level) each holding four daily class sessions and two periods of pull-out remediation for students with lesser and/or more specific needs.  This would enable a true distinction between Tier II and Tier III students.  This would mean that instead of working with seventy-two students, we would be working with 216, and that would still be only half of the students who need help (but it would be all of the most urgent cases). The force resisting this change is purely economic. The other force resisting this change is time. By the time we identify these students and begin remediation, they are already behind. We have only three years to take students reading on second and third grade levels and bring them up to eighth and ninth.  Time is a daunting factor.
6. The proposed change, while inadequate for our campus’s actual need, is viable and is a sound starting point for our program.
7. A number of things are needed for implementation: parent buy-in for the at-home or extra-curricular tutorial remediation using the Istation platform, continued campus spending on licenses and subscriptions for STAR and AR, campus spending on equipment to support the audio book intervention program, campus spending on equipment to support administration of the ISIP and implementation of the Istation Reding platform, and continued support by the administration to defend the use of a full-time faculty position for this purpose.  I will also need to reduce the strength of the student opposition to this change – their hopelessness and apathy. I hope to do this through the simultaneous implementation of a teacher-student mentor program begin launched by one of my colleagues. As this is the biggest obstacle at this point to individual students finding success given the tools that the campus, the district, and the state have all made available to us this year, I hope that by taking some of these students who have almost completely withdrawn from academic existence and pairing them with a coach who can be the caring adult so many of them are missing in their lives, they will be able to find and summon the will to improve, to take these tools, seize the opportunity, and thrive for the first time in years.

Just a couple of notes about my ARP (Thanks, Travis!)

I don’t think I ever really just came out and stated any of this…so here it goes.

First, the title of my ARP will be Effects of a Multi-Faceted Reading Intervention Program on the Overall Performance of Struggling Reader.

Second, a summary of my ARP follows: Students will be placed in the sample group by virtue of low performance on the Spring 2012 administration of the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) Reading test and/or our Spring 2012 or Fall 2012 campus Universal Screen using the STAR Reading assessment from Renaissance Learning.

Once placed in the sample group, the students will be scheduled for a daily reading improvement class in place of an elective course. The multi-faceted reading intervention program will incorporate the following elements: daily use of audio books (cassette tape recordings or mp3 recordings of unabridged novels played while the student follows along in a bound copy of the same text) four days each week; the use of summary bookmarks after every reading session to chunk information and build memory, comprehension, and sequencing skills; the Istation Reading with ISIP web-based intervention program at home (when available), in tutorials, and once each week after students complete progress monitoring assessments; weekly administration of the STAR Reading assessment for progress monitoring; and monthly administration of the Istation Indicators of Progress (ISIP) assessment as a secondary progress monitor and diagnostic tool.

Data from these assessments, the Accelerated Reader program (to track audio book success), grades in core classes, and state assessments will be used to determine the validity of the multi-faceted program and the amount of overall success enjoyed by the students in the sample group. 

My Action Research Plan

Okay, folks.  Here's my Action Plan Template.  Let me know what you think when you get a chance.  I'll be trolling the blogs later on tonight to check out yours and offer my two cents (for whatever two cents is worth anymore).

Action Planning Template
·       Goal: I will determine the extent to which the overall performance of struggling readers be increased through the implementation of a multi-faceted reading intervention program?
Action Steps(s):	Person(s) Responsible:	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
Determine eligible students for the program	Mrs. Shannon Allen, Principal	May 2012-July 2012	STAAR raw scores, STAR scaled scores	Students who exhibited low performance on both assessments will be placed in the program. Remaining spots will be filled based upon Fall 2012 Universal Screen (STAR) data
Institute class periods during which the interventions will take place	Mrs. Shannon Allen; Mrs. Ava Batiste, Counselor; Mr. Jeffrey Farley, ELAR Teacher	May 2012-June 2012	Master Schedule	Evaluate Master Schedule to assess the possibility of removing 8th grade ELAR students to other teachers in order to make Mr. Farley’s class periods available for Reading Improvement classes
Conduct Universal Screen	Mr. Jeffrey Farley, Reading Department	August 31, 2012-September 7, 2012	Campus STAR Reading subscription, computer labs (3 labs/3 days)	All students on the campus (except Life Skills students) will take the assessment in order to verify placement of children from previous assessment data and to fill spots in the classes with as many other students from the bottom of the field as the class capacity allows. Look particularly at incoming 6th graders for placement.
Begin daily interventions using audio books	Mr. Jeffrey Farley	September 6, 2012-April 24, 2013	Taped books, PlayAways, cassette players, headphones, power (strips, cords, etc.), Campus Accelerated Reader (AR) subscription	Students will work four days each week (M-Th) reading for 40 minutes each day. Remaining time will be spent documenting the day’s reading on the summary bookmark created for that book. Student reading will be tracked through the AR Reading Practice quizzes – point totals, average book level, and average quiz score will be assessed and documented.
Administer STAR Reading assessment weekly to monitor progress	Mr. Jeffrey Farley	September 14, 2012-May 3, 2013	Campus STAR Reading subscription, computer lab (every Friday, all year – administer STAR 2nd-4th Fridays of every month)	The STAR assessment will be used to determine starting Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) in terms of AR Book Level to help students choose appropriately comfortable/challenging independent reading material. Students will also track their own scaled score from the weekly assessments on a paper graph in their folder – this will help them self-assess their own progress and drive them to keep reaching.
Administer Istation Indicators of Progress (ISIP) assessment	Mr. Jeffrey Farley	October 12, 2012-May 10, 2013	District Istation subscription, computer labs (1st Friday of every month), headphones	The ISIP assessment will be a second diagnostic tool to help understand specific problem areas for each child in the program. The assessment will also inform the Istation practice platform so that each student receives interventions appropriate to his or her level/area(s) of difficulty
Administer Student Reading Survey	Mr. Jeffrey Farley	November 2, 2012	Google Survey modified from 2011 Concordia University Research study survey component	I will build the online survey using the CU survey component as a guide and administer the online survey after weekly progress monitoring in the lab on 11/2/2012. Survey data will be assessed as immediately as possible to determine whether factors within the students might need to be addressed during the program.
Begin using “Reading with ISIP” computer-based intervention program	Mr. Jeffrey Farley	November 2, 2012-May 31, 2013	District Istation subscription, computer labs (every Friday of the school year)	Students will spend any time after completing either the STAR or the ISIP on the Istation reading practice platform. Performance in this environment will be assessed at least every three weeks for grade reporting purposes and to discover the nature of the students’ use and priority areas as determined by performance in the practices.
Begin taking AR Vocabulary quizzes immediately following AR Reading Practice quizzes	Mr. Jeffrey Farley	October 25, 2012-May 31, 2013	Campus AR subscription	Based on preliminary examination of ISIP data, many students are struggling specifically with vocabulary and word analysis.  While the vocabulary quizzes in AR are based on the level of the book, and those book levels are often well-below grade level, the vocabulary quiz offers another data point for the dashboard and an opportunity to remediate students when performance of these assessments is low.
Administer mid-year STAR Universal Screen	Mr. Jeffrey Farley, Reading department	January 1, 2013-January 15, 2013	Campus STAR Reading subscription, computer labs (3 labs/3 days)	Mid-year Universal Screen will look for students who may have dropped during the first half of the year or entered the school during that time but after the initial Screen. All students will, again, be compared against every other student on the campus.
Administer STAAR Reading assessment	Entire Marshall MS faculty	April 3, 2013 (8th grade) and April 24, 2013 (6th & 7th grade)	State-provided Assessment	The STAAR Assessment will be one of the major, overall assessments of whether students improved throughout the course of the year. By comparing scaled scores with the 2012 scaled scores (to be reported in January 2013), we can begin to assess overall improvement.
Administer end-of-year STAR Universal Screen	Mr. Jeffrey Farley, Reading department	May 1, 2013-May 15, 2013	Campus STAR Reading subscription, computer labs (3 labs/3 days)	End-of-year Universal Screen will provide a second assessment of overall reading progress based on scaled score, grade equivalency increases, and increases in Instructional Reading Levels (IRLs). All students will, again, be compared against every other student on the campus.