Equity Analysis

Reflection:
The ability to study a school is powerful.  Before one begins to disaggregate any data, the only thing that there is to lean on is anecdotal data and gut instinct.  The work required in any school, but particularly a Turn-Around school, requires more than a gut instinct to drive decisions.  In order to impact student achievement, one must have the ability to analyze, disaggregate and triangulate data.  Using multiple data points that represent the school culture will assist a leader in driving decisions.  My ability to do this Equity Audit on two diffferent Title I schools in Manatee County allowed me an opportunity to know the school that I would serve in the 2012-2013 school year more intimately.  I was afforded the ability to go into this school with a handle on what the strengths and weaknesses were.  This data armed me with a foundation upon which I stood in negotiating conversations, assisting in moving the administrator's vision forward, and creating projects/procedures that were aligned to student need and teacher need.
Professor Leonard Burello provided the Gulf Coast Partnership cohort with a book entitled Studying Your Own School by Gary Anderson, Kathryn Herr and Ann Nihlen.  This book outlines the importance of understanding Action Research and how to best merge educational practices with the action research.  John Dewey launched a progressive movement in the 19th century on the importance of inquiry.  He stood on the basis that true inquiry required both common sense and science (Anderson, Herr, Nihlen. 2007 p. 18.)  This is what we are doing in action research; identifying the strengths and weaknesses in our schools by using data.  We make adjustments based on the data and then measure the outcome to determine whether our adjustments and implementations had any impact on moving the identified weakness towards becoming a strength and ultimately affected student achievement in a positive way.