How does Middle School Math Success (MS)2
Camp affect student achievement and attitudes towards math in the year
following math camp?
The
math camp invites only economically disadvantaged students. This goes along
with Leander district’s performance goal to, “Reduce
the performance gap between economically disadvantaged and non-economically
disadvantaged students in Math and Science across all grade levels while
continuing to increase the performance of all students as measured by district assessments.”
(http://www.leanderisd.org/users/0001/docs/AEIS/1112/DIP1112.pdf)
In the summer
of 2011, we started with the original test group of students that attended the
first camp for economically disadvantaged students. We gave each of our seven
middle schools a list of economically disadvantaged students and asked the
teachers to pick students whom they believed would benefit from having a camp
in the summer for math. Each campus got to choose the number of students that
correlated to the percentage of economically disadvantaged at their campus.
During the 2011-2012 school year, I studied the students’ of those that
attended the camp by looking at their district assessment scores and comparing
the scores to the previous years to see if attending the camp had any impact on
their success in math. I looked at the data to see if I could find a
correlation. Besides
myself, my co-worker, April Chauvette, helped me to gather data and report the
findings to the Secondary Math Coordinator, the Director of Curriculum and
Instruction and the Executive Director of K-12 Programs to help insure funding
for the continuation of the math camp for the summer of 2012.
The information that we had found on
attending math camps versus not attending were: Math camp helps to build
student’s self esteem towards math and gives them positive experience. Math
camp provides opportunity for some one-on-one learning and problem solving in
group settings. Math camp also focuses on skills to help students be successful
the following year and solidifies the skills taught the previous year. I also
saw findings that any kind of academic camp during the summer was better than
not attending at all.
After I pulled data for my action research
plan, I met with my site supervisor to discuss what the data showed. I was a
little disappointed that the data did not show what I thought it would. He said
that ‘data is data, it is what it is’. He encouraged me to pull the camp
attendees grades from last year and the current school year to see if there was
any impact. We also discussed that teachers made the recommendations for the
camp for a reason, so the camp attendees might have been low to begin with.
Luckily for this past summer, we were able to secure funding, since it was for
the best for students and not that the data showed any great improvement from
the camp.
I will continue to monitor the new group of
camp attendees and their data on district assessments. I will present the data
to the Secondary Math Coordinator, the Director of Curriculum and Instruction
and the Executive Director of K-12 Programs to try and secure funding for the
2013 summer camp. I do know with the current economic difficulties that the
funding might not be there, and since the original data did not show a big
difference the camp might be put on the chopping block.
