Team Members:

Janine Herbertson, Paula Kuhns, Sherry Triantos, Sara Pittenger, Michele Lund, Jan Zabukovic, Kelly Mathews, Holly Wellensiek, Carole DeLuca, Theresa Bartalo

Draft of Potential Research Questions:

Freeflow thoughts...

Learning styles (visual/spatial), materials, culturally diverse presentations, cultural interpretations (family, social acceptance), buy-in, teachers unwilling to shift their frameworks to match student need.  Competition within African American homogenous grouping=positive effect. Gender issues- male/female groupings especially in math and science. Poverty issues/truancy, homelessness . Ruby Payne discusses poverty levels are layererd and there are 'registers of language'.

Differentiation without losing focus of all learning groups. How can we broaden scopes and be inclusive of minority needs while not 'throwing the baby with the bath water.'and eliminating what has worked traditionally for some students?

Where is closing the gap working? 90/90/90 schools- is it worth it to eliminate all the alternative and fun stuff (PE, music...) to teach these kids? Maybe it's just the kids that want to be there that do well. 

Do minorities truly have a proclivity for one specific learning style?

Our official draft of an action research question related to closing the achievement gap:

• How can we personalize instruction among our underachieving groups in order to close the achievement gap?
   
  -we intend to research best practices for each subgroup and suggest professional development opportunites to teachers to pinpoint specific interventions and learning opportunities.

• Action Plan (April 25, 2008):  LRT Action Research CAG.doc

Resources

Closing the Achievement Gap: A Vision for Changing Beliefs and Practices (Paperback)

by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (Corporate Author), Belinda Williams (Editor)

Closing the Achievement Gap: Reaching and Teaching High Poverty Learners: 101 Top Strategies to Help High Poverty Learners Succeed (Paperback)

by Tiffany Chane'l Anderson (Author)

Effort and Excellence in Urban Classrooms: Expecting, and Getting, Success With All Students (Paperback)

Closing the Achievement Gap: No Excuses (Paperback)by Patricia Davenport (Author), Gerald Anderson (Author)

Are We There Yet? Continuing to Close the Achievement Gap (Paperback)by Patricia Davenport (Author), Terri Smith (Collaborator)

by H. Dickson Corbett (Author), Belinda Williams (Author), Dick Corbett (Author), Bruce L. Wilson (Author)

http://www.ecs.org/html/issue.asp?issueID=194 

http://www.pbs.org/closingtheachievementgap/

Report from CDE:  

Profile of Success / Eight Colorado Schools that are Closing the Achievement Gap

closing achievement gap.pdf

Two nationally recognized experts in Mulitcultural Gifted Education and Understanding Cluture and Cultural Diversity as it pertains to educational issues: Dr. Donna Y. Ford (donna.ford@vanderbilt.edu) and Dr. Gilman W. Whiting (g.whiting@vanderbilt.edu).  These are dynamic presenters who have done extensive research on the educational implications of culturally diverse classrooms.  They presented at a Minorities in the GT population seminar arranged by Gary Marx and gave an outstanding presentation that needed to be heard by way more people than those of us in the seminar!

Turning Around Chronically Low Achieving Schools Article 

Materials

Use the Action Plan linked below for your Team's work.  Click on the link, save the Plan to your computer; save the Plan as Your Team's Name_Action Plan_2.29.08.  As a Team, complete as much of the Action Plan as you can.  Then upload the revised plan to this page by going to "edit page" and then "Attach File."

Template:  LRT Action Research Team Plan.doc