Statistics - Week Three

I can't believe it, but I think I'm grasping the concepts that Jim is talking about in class!  I even applied some of it to our data discussion in a staff meeting about Rti and where our students fell with their individual test scores (I feel so smart!).  It still amazes me how I can learn one thing in the cohort, and find myself applying it the next day.  My husband and I had a conversation about my continuing with the program after all the budget and pay decreases.  My husband told me that he can see a difference in the way I teach in the last year, so if my teaching has been influenced and improved so much by the first year of this program, he felt I should "stay the course".  I think I have to agree with him!

Creating a survey has been very challenging (lack of help on the part of my "group") but very interesting.  I have created surveys in the past for our school district to gauge our communities' response to the school and it's programs.  But when setting up the survey I didn't have the tools or the knowledge on how to set it up correctly.  After reading Quality Digest article, I realized what I did wrong and how I will correct it in the future.  For example, I just randomly made up questions that I thought would pertain to our community members and their feelings toward our school.  There was no plan, or now real purpose to the survey.  In hind sight, I think answering all the questions that were brought up in the article would have given me direction, and with that the ability to write questions that were pertainant to the school and the issues surrounding the school.  I know with the upcoming budget crunch there will be other surveys to gauge how the public feels.  Hopefully I will be able to construct a survey which will help us, rather than give us random data that isn't useful.