Action Research Update

The conference with my site supervisor went well.  She was happy with template and had no issues with the plan.  She reminded me that I should talk with the PEIMS director and assessment director for our district.  She stated they should have information I could use for the action research project.  I found I have some of the information already in my files from the previous years TAKS testing, however, I have the scores for all those that took the Math TAKS on the days they were administered.  What I do not have is the knowledge of is of those that tested which ones count against our PEIMS snapshot date.     I made arrangements to meet with the district PEIMS director and had an hour-long meeting with him.  I conveyed to him what my action research project was about and what I was attempting to do.  He seemed enthusiastic about the project and stated he would be happy to help with obtaining the data.  He stated the data would not be difficult to obtain, a simple matter of running the campus through the PEIMS database for the timeframe requested.  His concerns were once I had the PEIMS snapshot data, was correlating it with the assessment results.  He was worried that the data comes from two different databases and whether or not these will work together.  He stated that once he had the data he would contact me and have me work with him in collating it.  The other issue would be tracking of those students who left our campus and went to another school within district.  This would take going through each year group and then cross referencing them with their number to see if they remained in district or left.  This would be time consuming, however, since our campus is one of the smallest in the district, it should be easy to check out the names.  At the end of the meeting he told me he would contact the TAKS assessment director to get the data I requested and to talk with her about how they could combine their respective databases to get the results needed.  He stated that since it was about to be the STAAR testing dates, both of their respective offices were going to be extremely busy for the next few weeks.  He told me that he should have the results as soon as they reached a lull in their schedules. I reported back to my site supervisor with the results of my meeting with the PEIMS director.