Goal : To find out if the Teacher Advancement Program will improve student achievement, raise staff morale, and increase teacher retention. Will the TAP program improve student achievement? Will it raise staff morale, and will it increase teacher retention in my school?
• The very nature of the TAP program is based on the use of data to drive instruction. So, I as a Master teacher will be using data on a weekly basis with my cluster.
• My PLC will consist of my cluster of teachers. The cluster will consist of all of the EC, Pre-K, Kinder, and 1st grade teachers. I will also have 2 mentor teachers, one being a Kindergarten teacher, and one a first grade teacher. I, as the master teacher will be responsible for the entire cluster’s professional development, amongst other responsibilities.
• I will have 14 teachers total in my cluster. I will support the instructional practices that the cluster will be learning about in our weekly meetings, through lesson modeling, peer observations, conferencing and PLC meeting collaboration.

ACTION STEP #1:
All teachers will participate in weekly cluster meetings consisting of on-going staff development, peer coaching, collaborative planning, reflection, evaluation & data analysis.
ACTIVITY: Master teachers (MT) will teach new instructional strategies focused on problem solving and critical thinking. The strategies will be research-based; field tested, grade specific, taught and modeled by the MT. Mentors will support their grade level colleagues in learning and teaching the new strategy. Career teachers will apply their learning and gather data that will help them adjust their instruction.
RESOURCES/RESEARCH TOOLS NEEDED:
1.TAP Instructional Rubric
2.TAP Manual
3.Resources such as handouts, articles, studies, etc.
4.Student work
RESPONSIBILITY TO ADDRESS ACTIVITIES: All cluster members (Master teacher, mentor teachers & career teachers)
TIME LINE: 50 minutes every Thurs. through out the 2010-2011 school year.
BENCHMARKS/ASSESSMENT:
Students: benchmarks, Math TAKS in grades 4th and 5th, observations, Pre and Post TEMI-O (Math diagnostic test) for grades 1-3.
Teachers: Instructional Rubric & TAP Evaluation tool.


ACTION STEP #2: Weekly TAP Leadership Team (TLT) (Principal, A.P, MT, & Mentor teachers) meeting.
ACTIVITY: TLT will review TAP program, plan for cluster meetings, review data, review teacher observations and evaluations.
RESOURCES/RESEARCH TOOLS NEEDED: Data, instructional Rubrics, evaluation instrument, TAP Manual
RESPONSIBILITY TO ADDRESS ACTIVITIES:Facilitated by School Principal, All TLT members
TIME LINE: 60 minutes every Monday through out the 2010-2011 school year.
BENCHMARKS/ASSESSMENT: TLT TAP rubric and TLT reflection/ feedback forms.

ACTION STEP #3: School climate & teacher morale checks
ACTIVITY: I will survey the staff at the beginning of the year, middle of the year and end of the year with a focus on school climate, teacher morale, and teacher reflection on their own practice in order to find out if participating in the TAP program changed in any way their feelings and attitudes about collaborative work & professional development, and their link to student achievement and quality teaching.
RESOURCES/RESEARCH TOOLS NEEDED: BOY, MOY and EOY surveys (Survey Monkey, EOY Student achievement data, and teacher retention data from last year and current year.
RESPONSIBILITY TO ADDRESS ACTIVITIES: Yvette Celorio-Reyes, TAP Master Teacher
TIME LINE: 3 times per year: August, January, and June
BENCHMARKS/ASSESSMENT: Returning teachers data (retention) and Climate Survey data.

Week 2 Assignment Reflection

I'm feeling more comfortable about this course at this point. It is extremely rigorous, but I like that is blends seamlessly with my Internship Plan. It, sort of, puts together a lot of the previous learning into this intimidating, but useful action research project. As you all know from the discussion board, my project falls right on the lap of my new position as a TAP Master teacher. I will be in charge of a third of my school's staff, complete with their staff development, mentoring, observations, and evaluations! Yikes! I just hope that, at the end we can see results on students' success stories!

My proposed Action Research Topic...

Hi Everyone! At the end of last school year, my school was chosen as one of 6 schools in the district to participate in the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) this coming year. TAP™ was developed based upon scientific research as well as best practices from the fields of education, business and management. The TAP Elements of Success stem from research findings about effective practices in attracting, developing, motivating and retaining the highest quality teachers to the profession, and particularly to high-need schools (http://www.tapsystem.org/policyresearch/policyresearch.taf).
Basically, program, created by the Milken Foundation, has 4 components; multiple career paths, ongoing PD, instruction-focused evaluations (not PDAS), and performance pay for teachers. The staff had to vote on participating or not. Since we had to base our votes on a 1 hour presentation and the research some of us did, everyone had a million questions. The school voted yes, but by 4 votes. Nevertheless, the staff is very anxious about what we will be doing this upcoming school year.
Purpose of my Action Research: Will the TAP program improve student achievement, will it raise staff morale, and will it increase teacher retention in my school. I will be using last year's and this year's TAKS data, as well as DRA, DIEBELS, and TPRI BOY, MOY and EOY data. I will also use teachers and parents' surveys to address the morale portion of my research. Lastly, I will compare teacher turnover numbers from the last 3 years and this upcoming year.
Significance of Action Research: My research will, not only make me a better informed professional, but it will also benefit my colleagues. Since this is a 1 year program, we will have a better understanding of it's impact in our school and our students. Therefore, we will be able to make a better informed decision for following years. It will help use determine, will we stick with it for the benefit of our students and ourselves as professionals, or will we vote to not participate for lack of evidence of its effectiveness. It will also make us reflect on our practice. Some of the inquiries I will be addressing are: Did the TAP program helped me improve my practice through its professional development component?, Did my students learn more deeply as I changed my practice?, Did the mentoring component of the program helped me professionally?, etc.

How may educational leaders/principal-researchers use blogging?

Blogging can be the means of collecting data. The data, in this case, will be the researcher's own reflections. The more frequent the researcher engages in blogging, the more data she is able to collect. In addition, the researcher is able to receive feedback in the form of comments and even engage in 'conversations' with other professionals with common interests.

What I've learned about action research...

Action research is a process that serves administrators and teachers as their own ongoing professional development that is focused on student learning and school improvement. As an administrator the first step of conducting action research is to reflect on my own practice, inquiring and identifying a practice in need of improvement. I then must collect and analyze data that will help me develop a plan of action and that will help me answer specific inquiries. The next step to action research is to study and learn ways that will bring about changes that will improve the specific practice. Implementation of the new practice follows, along with evaluation and reflection. As soon as the new practice shows positive and measurable results, it is institutionalized and the process begins again with a new inquiry. Simply put, Principals ‘take charge of their own professional development, and become the ‘head learner’ of their school’ (Dana, 2009).
The main difference between administrative inquiry or action research and traditional educational research is that, instead of someone from the outside going into a principal’s school or into a district to conduct an audit, ask questions, and tell them what to do to ‘fix’ a problem area, it is all done within. When principals conduct administrative inquiry they experience a sense of ownership, which will bring about actual change.
I also learned that there are several benefits when engaging in inquiry. It eliminates the norm of working in isolation since the principal is engaged in a real professional learning community. Also, the principal becomes a role model for his staff and students demonstrating the value of life-long learning. Additionally, instruction and learning improves with all of the continuous professional studying. Lastly, the principal’ pace naturally slows down since time for reflection is such a vital part of the process (Dana, 2009).
I will definitely be able to use this process with my leadership team as the tool to improve teaching practices and student learning. I will also use it for my own professional development.